The girl who stood Between
by Kadyn
Summary: I do not know what I did, it must have been something terrible, but I do not remember it. I have always been in section six. The doctors change, the scientist come and go, the soldiers too. Only I am constant. Correction, I was. I am there no more. OC/OC Story (Set in the same universe as my Daryl/Seraphim stories.)
1. Preface

**_Disclaimer: _**I do not own the concept of the Walking dead or any of it's original characters. I make no profit from this venture, and am writing it merely as an exercise of my own muse (who gets rabid and starts to bite when ignored) and hopefully for the enjoyment of others. So please don't sue! All you'd get is a used lab top and a subscription to Netflix!

**Notes:**This story and it's characters exist in the same 'TWD universe' as my other Two works "Occasio Ultima" and "Novissimo" But it is in no way necessary to read those two to understand this one. I will probably not be updating this story as frequently as those either. The muse kicked me in the face with these characters yesterday and I couldn't resist! Thanks! And I hope you enjoy! Reviews are always welcomed, and loved! ; )

This story is un-beta'd so any mistakes are mine.

* * *

**_The Girl Who Stood Between_**

_By Kadyn_

* * *

**Preface**

The world outside section six is bright. Too bright. It burns my eyes, sears them until tears track down my cheeks. Blinking seems to help; so does clenching my eyes very tight. But I cannot clench my eyes shut and run at the same time. So I blink.

There is also smells. Good smells. Bad smells. Section six has no smell. The people that come and go, the doctors and scientists and especially the soldiers they have smells. I do not. The little white bar of soap I am allowed to keep as mine, the one that I carry in my fist from my locker down the hallway to clean myself daily smells like I do. It smells like nothing.

The soldiers smell the most. They smell like many things that have earned classifications as I learn. I learn fast, or so they tell me. There are no other children to compare me too in section six, as far as I know there have never been any other children. So I am not sure how they know. Smells have names; names have meanings. Sweat. Dirt. Grease. Fear. They always smell of fear. I once found the scent odd. Griss says soldiers are strong, obedient. Soldiers follow orders; they are not afraid. For this reason I do not think Griss is very smart.

The scientist and doctors in section six do not smell like the soldiers, they smell like strong disinfectants and chemical compounds, and sometimes depending on the door they enter the hallway from they smell like death. I asked Dr. Patrice once why the soldiers smell like fear. She stared at me for a long time, so long I did not think she was going to answer. She simply told me, "It's their job." So I learned to be a soldier is to be afraid. I asked her later why there are so many soldiers here, it seems a waste. There is no fighting in section six. There is never even any yelling; unless Griss is here. Dr. Patrice said the soldiers are here because of me. That was the day I learned I am something to be feared.

I do not know what I did, it must have been something terrible, but I do not remember it. I have always been in section six. The doctors change, the scientist come and go, the soldiers too. Only I am constant.

Correction, I was. I am there no more.

I do not remember when exactly I learned the project was about to close. That is how the man in the dark blue suit decorated with little colored blocks on his chest termed it the very first time I heard the words; smelled fear on the scientists. Results he said, the weapon had to produce results. There were other words as well; resources, precious, wasted there were many other words I did not understand. I still do not. But I learned enough; enough to know that 'closing the project' meant I would not be there anymore. I did not know where I would go; but I knew if Griss or the man in the dark blue suit were sending me there it would not be good.

So I tried harder, and when I failed even I smelled like fear; but it was never enough. I could not please the man in blue. I could not please Griss, something I already knew. So I had to leave. I began to listen. I learned many things that way. With my ears, things I was not supposed to know. I learned what was behind doors that were never open, and the sound each number made on the little pads outside each door when it was pressed. I learned the patterns, made maps of things that I couldn't see from words overheard in my head, secret blueprints I hoped would lead to freedom. It took a long time, long enough that I no longer needed the two tiered steps to climb onto the cold metal tables in the lab. Long enough that my hair has been cut twelve times since I first learned I must escape. I know my hair is cut every four months; I learned this by listening too. Though it means little to me as I do not know what a month is. I only know days.

It hurts to run, but I have never done it before. New things often hurt, sometimes they get easier; and sometimes like the test with the little white wires they always hurt. I do not know if running will get easier. I do not know if I will be doing it long enough to find out. Running is not allowed in section six unless you are a soldier. Though I have never seen them do it, in theory they are the only ones allowed. My lungs are burning, my feet throb and ache, sharp spasms of pain stabbing blindly up my legs causing me to jerk my feet up faster; trying to avoid the ground. I run harder, faster with every painful step. Pain is a motivator, Griss says. Pain is weakness leaving your body behind. I am not allowed to be weak. They are bleeding heavily when I have to stop to climb down a steep gulley that is wet and slick at the bottom. I stumble and grunt scrambling up the other side. They are not the only part of me that is wounded now, I am cut and torn my shirt is ripped, but I cannot stop.

I run until I am dizzy, and then I stumble with painful hitching uneven steps until the light fades and I must contend with inky darkness. At least it no longer hurts my eyes. When the trees stop suddenly in a straight line I do not know what to make of the smooth concrete surface at its edge. I stoop to press my fingers against it testing its strength; it does not appear to give, but I know it does not belong. Concrete is for indoors; concrete makes walls, and ceilings, and floors. It does not belong in the forest, it does not grow. I press one hesitant aching foot to its surface then another when it does not move, it is easier to walk here. I am familiar with this surface even if it is not as smooth as I would like. The concrete floors of section six were like glass, and always cold.

I do not know what to make of the lights when I see them. I have never seen lights like these before. Lights are supposed to sit in the ceiling; or high on a wall. Here there is neither. These lights are evenly spaced, bright; they appear at the edge of the concrete floor and as I stop to watch them the lights move closer. I raise my arm to shield my eyes when they are close enough that I can hear them rattle. Certain I will go right between them. Then they screech. It is a painful sound, forces me to clap my hands over my ears to block it out.

When the lights stop I am inches from the rattle. I reach out with one hand press my fingertips to this new sound. A rusted metal grate that's hot to the touch. It burns my fingers and I hiss jerking them away press the new aching digits to my mouth to soothe the sting. A door opens behind the lights someone begins speaking; no yelling.

I realize they are yelling at me.

"What the Hell are you doing in the middle of the god damn road!? I thought you were a fucking geek! I almost hit you! Hey, I'm talking to you!"

"I realize that." Though I am not sure 'talking' is the appropriate term. A man is stepping around the light. He is loud whoever he is; and taller than me though that is normal in my experience. His hair is dark, his jaw broad and rough like some of the soldiers would get at the end of a long shift the kind that made them extra cranky.

"What the Hell are you doing in the middle of the road?" Road. Yes. That is the word for this stretch of concrete in the middle of the woods.

"I need a ride." He's staring at me but that's okay, people stare at me a lot. There is a word I have heard used, not often, but enough. "Please."

"You got any weapons on you?"

"No." Only soldiers carry weapons. I notice the gun holstered on his hip, the knife on his belt. Is he a soldier? He doesn't smell like fear. He smells like sweat, and dirt, and something else I have no name for.

"You're out here in the middle of the night in the woods without any weapons? I know this is the Valley but what the hell were you going to do if you ran into Geeks?"

"What is a Geek?" It's a funny sounding word, Geek. The end of it makes my tongue flick. I try it again.

"That's cute, real cute. Call them whatever the hell you want I don't care." He did not answer my question, so I am not sure what else to say. Neither of us move, the lights behind him continue to rattle; they do not sound entirely healthy.

"Where to?" He asks indicating with his arm that I should follow him.

"Anywhere but here." Is the only answer I can give.

Which is where my story starts.

It's how I escaped.

It is how I ended up in the cab of a truck with a man named Bryn Colt.

* * *

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

* * *

"So, you got a name?"

I am busy watching the twin lights through the glass. They illuminate the long ribbon of concrete we travel on. We are going very fast; faster than I could ever run even if my feet did not ache so bad. I hope we do not hit anything in the darkness. I am glad he did not hit me. It would have been…_messy_.

"Hey," the man whistles drawing my attention, "I said, you got a name?"

I consider that for a moment. I know what names are people at section six have them. Even the soldiers who never speak have them. They wear them on their clothes sometimes written in blocky white letters or on little white plastic squares with pictures hanging around their necks. Sometimes when they are important like the man in dark blue and Griss they're displayed on little gold rectangles over their breasts. I have never had a golden rectangle or a plastic square, my clothes are pale blue and plain with one pocket. Which is just as well, pockets are for pens and little folded papers with chemical notes and appointment times scribbled on them, I have neither. I asked a soldier once what my name was he sneered at me and reeked of fear when he answered, "Bitch, like you need a name." It did not sound like a nice word. Dr. Patrice told me I should not repeat it. But it is the only one I have.

"Bitch." I tell him confidently.

He snorts, then starts to laugh.

I frown. "Is that wrong?"

He sobers quickly eyes darting from the road to my face. I'm not sure what he sees there but the truck slows noticeably before he turns back to the glass and we speed up again, going faster now then we were before. His jaw clenches for a moment. "You're serious aren't you?" He speaks to the glass not to me, but I answer anyway. I am the only other person here.

"It's the only name I've ever had."

"That's just sad kid. I've heard of some messed up shit but that…" he pauses shakes his head once. I watch his knuckles tighten on the scuffed and worn wheel he uses to steer. "Well, we can't call you that. My name's Bryn. Bryn Colt."

I consider that for a moment too. I have never met someone with _two_ names. Soldiers have one name. Doctors and scientist also have only one, but they do not go without their titles; and they get angry when someone forgets.

"Do you need both names?" It seems selfish when I have none. "I could be Bryn." It's a nice sounding name, I like it.

"We can't both be Bryn," Bryn tells me. "I'll stay Bryn and we'll think up something to call you."

"Something other than Bitch?"

Bryn's jaw tightens. "Something other than Bitch, anyone ever calls you that again I want you to pop 'em right in the mouth."

I don't know how to do that. I wonder if Bryn will teach me.

* * *

We drive for a long time, sometimes Bryn speaks. Sometimes he goes quiet for a long time. He seems to go quiet most often after I have spoken; when he asks a question I do not know how to answer, or tells me something I do not understand. It is a good thing I am a quick learner because it is obvious I am doing something wrong.

When the light comes back it does so slowly; gradually in the same way it faded. This time my eyes do not burn. It starts so slowly at first I do not notice; still staring out the front glass of the truck as we drive. That is what Bryn calls it; driving. I'm not sure when I was able to see more then the stretch of concrete in the two beams through the glass, but when I realize I can see trees out the side window to my right. I stop talking so I can stare. Taking it all in. It's so big, this _outside_, we have been driving very fast and it has yet to end. Though sometimes the trees end in great big spaces Bryn calls fields and there are blocky structures much too small to have a section six inside them. Houses and barns; _farms_ Bryn calls them.

They are fascinating each one slightly different growing more distinct as the light turns the world around me from many shades of grey to brilliant greens and blues and there is even some red, and yellow. I have never seen so much color. Section six was always grey, or white: like the scientist and doctors' coats. Color was not important, white paint is easier to patch when something goes wrong. It went wrong a lot.

"Can't believe you're still awake." Bryn tells me.

"You have not given me a serum to sleep." I am still staring out the window, this time at another blocky structure with an unusual roof line. It has lots of rectangle glass in its sides, and a second roof with open walls wrapping all the way around its base. It's strikingly beautiful. Like a painting that once hung in Dr. Patrice's office before they made her take it down. Bryn is very quiet. I realize I have said something else that is wrong.

He is staring at me instead of the road when I turn my head. I wonder if that is dangerous. "They give you a serum to sleep?" He asks me an odd expression on his face.

"Yes," I tell him. "That way they know I am rested." There was one to wake up too, but he should know that: everyone does.

"What kind of a nut house did you escape from exactly?" Bryn is eyeing me like some of the soldiers used to; but he doesn't smell like fear. Now that it is brighter inside the cab I can see that his eyes are the exact shade of the little bottle of warm honey Dr. Patrice would sneak into the lab sometimes to dribble on my sandwiches; they remain fixed on me so bright they almost glow. His skin is smooth and tan except for his jawline which is still wide and stubble rough in odd patches. His hair is not as dark as I originally thought, it hangs almost to his chin in dark chestnut waves I wouldn't quite call curls.

I consider his question for a moment. "Doctor Reese likes peanuts."

"A peanut house?" Bryn says and for some reason this makes his lips turn up on one side; it's an unusual expression I've never seen before. It does funny things to my stomach.

"It's the only nuts I know," I tell him positive that this at least is the right answer. I am after all a fast learner.

"I'm not so sure about that." Bryn says.

* * *

When we finally stop the sun is high overhead the truck engine rattles; wheezes and coughs as it dies. I wonder for a moment how Bryn will resurrect it again. It sounds like it might be dead for good. But then many things that are dead come back.

I stare through the glass at the house we sit in front of. It is not one of the grander structures like we have passed along our journey. Which is too bad; I would have liked to see what they looked like inside as well. This structure is an almost a single story, except for the small square of glass set in the steep triangle of the roof just above another roof that is longer, flatter and stretches the length of the white house's front and one side with evenly spaced poles made of wood. The paint is peeling in a few places, and the stairs creak.

"It's a porch," Bryn informs me when I ask him if he's not done building it yet, if that's why the walls are missing on one side. He pauses standing next to me on the porch, he is looking down at my feet. I realize I have left bloody footprints on the wood behind me. "Where are your shoes?" Bryn asks me.

"I don't have any shoes."

"Of course you don't." He grumbles opening a door that seems rather pointless being made of mostly colored glass. Doors are supposed to be made of steel. I know that. I wonder why he doesn't?

I watch him push the door open then turn back around to face me. He hesitates for a moment then moves towards me. "What are you doing?" I lean away from him studying his hands.

"You're not going to bleed all over the carpets, they're a pain in the ass to clean." That must be why he is carrying me. Which makes sense, these carpets are not white like the walls in section six. They must be difficult to replace. "Guess we'll put you upstairs." He adds, which I don't have an opinion on so I remain silent.

Bryn carries me up a narrow flight of wooden stairs, they sound hollow under his boots and creak every few steps. I wonder for a moment if we might fall through. He pushes open the first door on the right in a short hallway and uses his boot to kick aside a small yellow rectangle of rug leaving a smooth block patterned floor that's cool on my toes when he sets me down.

It's a small room; a bathroom based on the toilet and sink. There is also a strange basin that is white and chipped on one corner showing metal underneath, based on the faucet on the wall it must be a shower though I've never seen one that needed a metal bucket this size for a bottom. It does not appear to be a room built for two people and Bryn curses trying not to bump into me when he bends over to pick up the rug. He rolls the yellow rectangle and shoves it beside the toilet so it is out of the way of my bloody feet. I guess he does not want to replace it either.

"I'll get you a towel. I'll be right back." He backs out of the door leaving it open behind him. It is obvious with my bloody feet he intends for me to shower so I remove my top and pants folding them neatly and placing them over the edge of the sink. I'll have to ask Bryn where the recycle bin is, it doesn't seem to be located in this room. While I wait for him to return I trying not to rock on the balls of my feet listening to the silence. Griss hates when I fidget. His soldier's don't fidget. They stand like statues and wait for orders. I guess that is why I am not a good soldier.

I hear heavy footfalls in the hallway a minute later Bryn pushes open the door already speaking. "Here we go. It's a little threadbare but it's…_JesusChrist_!" The towel he was carrying folded in one hand is all but thrown over me while he turns his entire face away. His skin has turned an intriguing beat red from his neck all the to his hair line. I worry for a moment based on his behavior that he's been shot. "You're _naked_!" He sputters turning his head so far it looks like his neck might snap.

"Was I not supposed to get cleaned up?" Perhaps I misunderstood.

"Yes! But you're not supposed to be naked in front of other people!" Bryn's hand is now clapped over his eyes. He is talking very loud for such a tiny room.

"I've been naked in front of lots of people." I tell him not sure what the problem is. No one has ever been bothered by it before, as far as I can tell in section six no one even notices.

Bryn stops covering his eyes, lowers his hand so it appears he's blocking my body from his line of sight despite the towel now covering me allowing him to stare at just my face. His eyes narrowing for a brief moment then his jaw clenches making the muscles in his neck just under his ears stand out. "I'm liking this picture you're painting for me less and less by the minute. Just what kind of sick fucks have you been living with?" He growls shaking his head and turning away before I can ask him more about the picture and tell him that I have never painted anything in my life. But it's just as well; I have a feeling I am getting things wrong. Again.

"Just get cleaned up there's soap right there, and I'll try to find you something to wear…I'll leave it outside the door." He starts to leave but stops with his back still turned to me speaking over his shoulder staring at the wall so hard I glance at it as well wondering what he is seeing, but it remains blank and pale yellow like the rug I am not allowed to touch.

"Will anyone be looking for you?" he asks.

I cock my head to the side wondering how much I can trust this strange Bryn Colt. He is not a scientist, or a doctor. And he is definitely not a soldier though he carries a gun. He is an unknown entity with two names that smells like anger when he thinks about me being naked in front of other people and smells afraid when I'm naked in a room with only him.

I decide to take a chance. "Yes, and it would be best if they did not find me."

"At least on that we can agree." Bryn says. Then he shuts the door.

* * *

_to be continued..._


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

Bryn's soap does not smell like Bryn. It also does not smell like nothing. It smells crisp, and feels slightly oily on my hands. It stings the cuts on my feet and toes; makes the water run pink. I have never been in a shower like this, there are several different sized and shaped bottles lined up on a shelf near my head. I take each one down and sniff them cautiously, not sure if they are safe. One of them smells so good I taste it, but it is bitter so I set it back down.

There is a knock on the wooden door and Bryn's voice muffled asks me if everything is alright. I must be taking too long. I would not be allowed to shower this long at section six either. I turn off the water and quickly towel myself dry; then remembering Bryn's reaction before I carefully wrap the now damp towel around my body making sure to cover as much skin as possible. I carefully step over the rim of the metal bucket, it is slick like my feet on the smooth floor so I hold onto the sink's edge to make certain I do not slip.

When I open the door Bryn is leaning against the far wall staring pointedly at his feet. He does not look up. He points to the floor near the wall beside me. "Clothes."

I bend down to pick them up. A large dark colored shirt with long sleeves and a pair of pants that are far thicker then what I came with; the material is dark grey and pilled in several places but soft. I drop the towel and quickly pull the shirt over my head and the pants up to my waist. When I look up Bryn is still staring at the floor, chestnut locks obscuring most of his face with the downward tilt of his head. "I am dressed." I inform him.

"Good, let's take care of your feet." Bryn ushers me back into the tiny room and has me sit on the closed toilet seat propping my feet up on the edge of the metal bucket that makes his shower so unique. He opens the mirror over the sink, something I have never seen before and begins pulling things out while I watch.

"What's it called?" I ask.

Bryn glances up at me. "This? It's antibiotic ointment; it will stop you from getting an infection...hopefully." He has started wrapping both my feet with white gauze.

"Not that," I recognized the smell, it is not the first time I have been hurt. "This." I tell him thumping one foot against the bucket's metal rim.

Bryn stares at me for a moment, than looks back at my feet shaking his head. "It's called a bathtub." He appears to be finished with my feet. He leans back staring at me for a moment. I stare back, waiting.

"Are you hungry?"

I nod. "Yes, is it time to eat here?"

Bryn frowns. "I'll dissect that comment later. I'm going to pick you up again, okay?"

Even with my feet bandaged it seems best. "Okay."

He hesitates a moment, which I do not understand since it was his suggestion but then he picks me up and carries me back down the stairs. We walk through the front room again, past the front door and into a second room with a table and several wooden chairs. The table is not cold metal; it is made of wood, on the other side of the room is a bank of U shaped counters that are also made of wood. One of the counters is white with a black window built in its front. There is another white box; taller than all the rest; I realize it is a fridge when Bryn opens it. All the fridges in section six have glass fronts so the scientists can see inside them without opening the doors. I watch him curiously moving between the two white boxes. He strikes a match lighting a flame on top of the windowed box the same way the scientist light the burners under their glass beakers. I wonder if whatever Bryn is making will smell as bad as some of those liquids. I cannot imagine eating them. There is a strange flat pan instead of glass and a few minutes of popping sounds before Bryn slides a bright red plate onto the table in front of me.

I stare down at the strange objects we're both supposed to eat. Oblong circular shapes that are white on the outside and bright yellow in the center. There are three on my plate, and three on his. I watch him pick up his fork and slice through the first one shaking something from a little white container over his first bite. He stops with it halfway to his mouth. "What's wrong? You never seen eggs before?"

"Eggs." I stare down at the plate. "I have eaten protein and grain. Is eggs one of these?"

"Eggs, Protein." Bryn tells me then shoves the bite he had frozen in mid-air talking to me into his mouth.

I pick up my own fork and mirror his actions, lifting a bit of the white egg to my mouth. It is good, better then protein; more solid and yet soft. It taste much better then grain which honestly has no taste at all in the way that my soap had no smell. I eat all three finding the center where the egg is yellow and still a little bit liquidy when I cut into it with the fork is better then the rest. The yellow flavor is even richer, it sits on my tongue even after I've swallowed the last bite down.

"Good?" Bryn is staring at me when I look up. I nod. Maybe if I am lucky tomorrow there will be more eggs instead of protein and grain. Bryn has taken the red and now empty plate from in front of me and set it in a sink inset into one of the wooden cabinets near the short white box that makes eggs. "Alright, I think it's time for sleep. I'm going to carry you back upstairs." I nod to him and he picks me back up, carrying me back through the front room and up the squeaky staircase to the next room down the hall. This one is slightly larger than the bathroom, there is a small rectangle window and a bed, a desk, and a chair.

Bryn sets me down on the bed and starts to leave. "My room is downstairs. I have a gun under my pillow and I'm a light sleeper, so just don't try anything funny."

"I will not try anything funny." I assure him.

"Good, well goodnight." He shuts the door and I hear his feet move down the hall; and the creaky stairs.

I lay down staring at the beam of sunlight over the ceiling wondering how I will fall asleep when he forgot to give me any serum. I have never slept without serum…I lay still looking at all the different objects in this tiny room memorizing the floral pattern near the ceiling that doesn't match any of the pictures. Even the ceiling here is odd; it's sloped and not flat and it is not made of concrete. I start to feel very heavy after a while, my eyes shut and I fall asleep.

* * *

When I wake I am alone. There is no one present to have given me the reversal serum.

I lie still staring up at the blank white ceiling remembering the pictures I saw in my head only moments ago even though I was asleep. I have never seen pictures like those before; when I sleep there is only darkness and then there is the light of being awake. I do not know what to make of the strange things I have just seen, seconds ago I was still in the woods—running from the soldiers. But no matter how hard I tried to run my legs took me nowhere. Then the Others came and ate the soldiers even when I screamed at them to stop. When I opened my eyes I was here.

I sit up slowly and get to my feet, the bottoms are tender but they were well wrapped and there is no one to carry me now so if I wish to leave this room I must do it on my own. I cross the smooth wooden floor to the wooden door. There is no panel, no numbered buttons to press. I twisting the handle surprised to find it unlocked. The hallway beyond is still empty and short just two other doors on the opposite side. I open the first and find it goes nowhere. It is a closet stuffed with boxes and other things I do not have any use for. I close it again and open the second door situated almost perfectly across the hall from my own.

This doorway leads to a second bedroom also with a small window, a bed similar to the one I just slept in, a desk and a dresser. There is a bookshelf near the window one shelf covered in thin gold spine'd books and a truck like the one outside, this one too small for people and made of wood. It rolls across the shelf when I poke it leaving tracks in the dust. Several colored photos like those on the plastic rectangles sit in black frames. But unlike the plastic rectangle faces these ones are smiling; each one of them contains a little boy with blonde locks and a wide grin with him in almost every picture is a beautiful woman with long wavy blonde hair and a man who looks like the Bryn downstairs, but a little different too.

They share the same squared jaw and liquid amber eyes, the same chestnut locks though the man's in the picture are definitely shorter, spiky almost. 'Family' one of the black frames is labeled in silver letters. I set it back down and leave the room pulling the door shut behind me. I get the feeling Bryn would not be happy to know I had been in that room.

The staircase protests every other step, though not as loudly as it first did. The wooden boards feel solid under my feet despite the noise so I no longer worry that I will fall through. The front room is empty, so is the room with the table and the room beside that with two long blue striped couches and a rough wall made of grey stones with a rectangle missing in its middle. I wonder briefly where Bryn has gone. I wonder if he has left again but the truck is still sitting in front of the house when I lift the lace covering the front window to check. I stand very still, listening until a soft noise draws my attention.

The back of the room with the couches and the rough stone wall has two doors in its far wall. I open the first to find another bathroom, this one is not yellow and does not have a bathtub I note. It has a shower made of glass and is painted the same color as Bryn's eyes. I shut that door and try the second one. Behind it is a large slightly oblong room with four windows and a sloped roof. There is a dresser made of dark wood and another one of a different color that is taller and thinner. I do not see why someone would need two. The bed is bigger than the ones upstairs; twice their size. It has poles made of dark wood carved with swirling marks and rounded edges that stretch up to stop a foot maybe two from the slanted ceiling. Bryn is asleep on the bed, the sound I heard earlier is coming from him.

I move closer checking the top of the dresser and the little tables on either side of the bed for a silver case or cylinders so I can wake him up. I frown staring down at him when I find neither. He is still sleeping. I try calling his name, then repeat it but he still does not move. I start to worry that without the serum he will sleep forever and I will not be able to wake him. I poke him with my hand but he does not respond so I climb onto the bed, sit over him shaking his shoulders calling his name.

'Bryn, Bryn. Bryn!"

"Wha?!" He jerks up from the bed making a strangled sound before seizing my shoulders and shoving me backwards, twisting. Instinct kicks in and I lock my hands around his forearms yanking and rolling, twisting as we tumble through the air we land on the wooden floor beside the bed Bryn grunts stares up at me eyes wide. For not being a soldier he is still built like one, his shoulders are broad. His chest and arms well-muscled and just as tan as his face. He also sleeps naked.

"The Hell are you Doing?!" He barks.

"You would not wake, I thought you said you were a light sleeper?"

"I also said I had a gun under my pillow!" He snarls.

"We are not near your pillow." I tell him, unsure why he would bring that up now.

"Get off me!" Bryn curses shoving me back. I climb to my feet and wait watching him stand up. He turns his back on me retrieving a pair of soft blue pants like he wore when he found me he shove his legs into them violently pulling them on over his hips with a sharp tug. Then he drags one hand through his hair staring at me. "What time is it," he turns to glance at a small black box on the little table beside the bed. "Cripes, it's only been four hours. How are you awake?" He sits on the edge of the bed pulling a dark grey shirt off the foot board and sliding it over his head.

"I do not know. I saw pictures. I think they woke me."

Bryn stares at me. "Pictures."

I nod. "Yes, in my sleep."

"You were dreaming?" he asks me.

I stare down at him still seated on the edge of the bed watching me, his expression tight. "I don't know, I have never seen them before." I confess.

"You've never dreamed before?" Bryn shakes his head makes an odd sound a mix between a grunt and a groan. "Okay, nameless girl from the peanut house. I'm gonna need coffee for this conversation, I can already tell. Let's go."

* * *

"Do you want some?" Bryn asks me when we are sitting in the room with the table once more.

I know what coffee is, I have smelled it many times; but I was never allowed to have some. "Yes." I wonder if it will taste like eggs.

Bryn pours some of the dark liquid into a white cup with a curved handle and asks me, "Do you want sugar?" I stare at him and he frowns. "Let me guess, you've never had coffee before."

"No, I have not." I admit.

"Sugar." He says something decided I was not aware of and uses a silver spoon to scoop white powder into the cup. He stirs it and then moves to the fridge opening it and adding something else to it as well, then he hands it to me with a warning. "It's hot."

I take the cup, taking a careful sip. It is hot. The tip of my tongue tingles and the roof of my mouth hurts. I swallow painfully and set the cup down. It does not taste anything like eggs, and my tongue continues to tingle while somewhere behind my sternum burns in protest of the hot liquid. Bryn slides into the chair across from me, taking several sips from his own cup when he sets it down I notices his coffee is darker than mine, almost black. It is also steaming which does not seem to bother him. I run my tingling tongue over the roof of my mouth testing the sensation while I wait for him to speak.

"Alright," he says staring at me. "How did you end up on that road? Did someone leave you there?"

I stare at him for a moment. "No."

He takes another sip. "Yeah I didn't think so. So you ran away?"

"Yes. I ran for a while."

"So you've been running for a while?"

"No that is the first time."

Bryn shakes his head staring up at the ceiling for a moment. "Right. Let's try this again." He looks at me again eyes locked on mine. "Where did you run away from?"

I hesitate, staring down at the light brown liquid still in my cup. It reminds me of his eyes. I frown. "I do not know if I can tell you that." _I am not sure if this Bryn Colt is safe. _I glance up at him again to find him watching me.

"It's okay if you don't know." Bryn tells me. He has misunderstood my answer, but that is okay because he moves on. "Were they hurting you?" He asks staring at me, his jaw is clenching again, tight creases formed at the corners of his eyes. It looks like he is in pain, though how the words hurt him I don't know.

I stare at the cup in my hands when I answer, looking at him seems to make him wince more. "Yes, sometimes they hurt me a lot." I tell him. Like the white wires that made my head feel like it was going to pop.

Bryn is quiet for a long moment. Slowly twisting the cup between his fingertips against the wooden surface. "Well, you're on the other side of the Valley now so you're safe."

"The Valley?"

Bryn stares at me again. "You don't know what the Valley is?" I shake my head. "Do you know what's outside the valley?" I shake my head again, wondering if it is like what is outside section six. If that is the case I cannot even begin to imagine just how big it is. "Didn't you ever go outside?"

I shake my head again. "No, this is the first time I have been outside…it is…very different."

"I bet." Bryn says. He drinks coffee for a few minutes, gets up and refills his cup, sits back down to drink it without adding any sugar or the white liquid I think is called cream. "Well, you need a name." He says.

"Yes." I tell him. I remember this from earlier. I wait, I am eager to hear what I might be called.

"Any suggestions?"

I shake my head. "I have never thought about it."

"You've never thought about your name?" Bryn sighs looking very tired again despite the second cup of coffee. I wonder if he needs a third. I am still holding my first. The smooth sides of the cup warm my hands. He's silent for a long time just staring at me while I stare back. Sometimes his gaze slides away and he swallows even though he hasn't raised his cup to take a sip. He leans back in his chair sometime after my cup is cool enough that I can drink the coffee without singeing my tongue again.

"Sorry Charlie, I suck at this," Bryn tells me finally shrugging.

"_Charlie_?" I ask testing the word.

"It's an expression," Bryn tells me getting up to pour that third cup of coffee. I wonder when he will start to shake.

"Charlie is a good name?" I do not know anyone at section six who was called Charlie. I like that. I do not want to be reminded of that place now that I am free.

"Charlie is a boy's name." Bryn frowns.

"So it is _not_ a good name?"

"It's a good name…"

"Then I will be Charlie." I decide.

* * *

to be continued...


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

"Okay, there's got to be some things in here that will work." Bryn tells me shoving open a heavy wooden door that rolls away from a larger square doorway revealing a vast dark interior he flicks a switch to light. The structure is large on the outside with a domed sloping roof it's walls were once red but the paint is faded and cracked; worn clear down to the boards in many places. Inside is another truck; larger than the one that rattles with a long flat back made of thick planks of wood. But that is by far the least interesting thing to see. There is more furniture here than in the house, none of it matches there are light fixtures attached to nothing, and boxes and stacks of little things I have never seen gathered all in one place before. I stop beside one of the boxes reaching my hand inside to touch a few of the things. I'm holding a glass bird painted a cracked deep green blue, when I look up to see Bryn standing beside me.

"That matches your eyes." He says, then he frowns. The corners of his lips twisting down forming a tight line. He takes the bird from my hand and sets it back inside the box. It clinks against some other object and I worry for a moment it may have broken.

"Come on, shoes are this way." I follow him down a row of dressers to a length of tables piled with stacks of clothing and rows of shoes. "What size are you?" He asks me walking between the tables.

"I do—"

"Not know, yeah. I should have guessed that. Come here." Bryn says. I stand on one leg slipping my other foot out of the oversized black rubber boots he put on my feet at the back door to the house. They are so large they nearly slip off my legs each time I take a step forcing me to shuffle awkwardly. He brings over several different shoes and boots holding each one against the bottom of my foot setting some down on the table beside my hip and taking others away again.

"Why do you need so many shoes?" I ask him.

"I'm a picker." He tells me. "My dad taught me."

"A picker?" it's obvious from his tone he thinks I should know this name.

Bryn stares at me grabbing another shoe. "Yeah, you know people that risk life and limb leaving the Valley to search for things people need? We supply items that people can't afford to buy from the government market, or items that are illegal or difficult to get."

"You leave the Valley?" I ask, I wonder if that means he can tell me how big it is.

"Yeah," Bryn tells me face grim. "It's why most pickers don't live too long."

"So it's dangerous to leave the Valley. Why?"

Bryn is done picking through the shoes he's sifting through piles of clothes now. "Geeks, Freaks, Biters whatever you call them most pickers get bitten or eaten, hazard of the job…and then there's the occasional gang of thugs to avoid."

Something clicks. "Others." I say.

Bryn looks up from a stack of shirts. "What?"

"The Geeks… you mean the _Others_…the dead." I tell him certain they are the same.

"Others. Sure doesn't exactly fit the horror of being eaten alive but yeah." Bryn says handing me a pile of clothing. "Here, these should fit better then what you have on." I take the clothing from his hands staring up at him. No one has ever given me a choice of what to wear. None of the folded items in my arms are like the pale blue shirt and pants I have worn my entire life. I set the pile down on the table, careful not to knock over any of the shoes Bryn has lined up on the edge of the table or the little pile he has discarded during his search.

"Oh Cripes," Bryn mutters turning his back on me when I reach for the hem of the dark grey shirt I'm wearing lifting it over my head. "You know, you could have waited 'til we got in the house." He tells the ceiling his voice oddly tight. He shoves his hands into his pockets rocking on the balls of his feet sporadically. For some reason he curses when the other heavy rubber boot he lent me hits the packed earth floor with an audible_ thump_ so I can pull the pants he gave me early off my legs unhindered.

I pull on the first pair of pants in the pile. They are blue like my old pants; but a different shade. There are also pockets like Bryn's on the sides and backs. They are tighter too, fitting snuggly against my thighs and hips when I figure out how to close the tiny metal teeth and clasp in the front. I run my fingers over the shirts; one of them is very different from the others. It's a pale cream in color, and the back is made of lace like the curtains upstairs over the windows. Instead of sleeves it has three satiny soft ribbons that when I pull it over my head lie in straight lines over my clavicles. The last one is too loose, slips down over my shoulders to rest against my upper arms. But the rest of it is more fitted then my old blue shirt which hung off my shoulders past my butt giving me no shape at all, this material tucks in at my waist, hugs my breasts and is just long enough to reach my hips.

Bryn's back is still turned to me, like before. "I am dressed." I tell him. He turns back around slowly his eyes taking in the fit of the items I have chosen.

He curses making me wonder what I have done wrong I pull the third strap up over my shoulder again not certain if that is the problem. "That's uh…" Bryn swallows, clears his throat looking away. "Yeah, uh that fits." Then he clears his throat again.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," His voice warbles in a funny way, he clears his throat again cheeks flushing his eyes darting away from my face. "Shoes." He says. And begins handing me different shoes to try on keeping his eyes firmly fixed to my feet. We find two pairs of shoes that fit well. I have never even owned one pair, let alone two.

A few minutes later I stand in front of Bryn in my new clothes and shoes certain I look nothing like my previous self. "I will blend in now yes?" I need to blend in so they will not find me. I cannot go back.

Bryn frowns. "Hang on." He walks away from me moving to a dresser at the end of the tables opening several drawers. He pulls something out of the second from the top and shuts the drawer again before walking toward me once more. He's holding something in his hand, something small and silver that spins so fast on the end of a thin silver line I cannot tell what it is. I twist my head to watch him as he moves behind me, slips something around my neck telling me, "Most girls wear something like this, either a ring or bracelet or earrings…this one isn't expensive so it won't draw too much attention. And it's short so it shouldn't get caught on anything." He steps back around me while I raise my fingers to feel the tiny cold metal charm now hanging around my neck it has an unusual shape I don't recognize. I drop my hand back to my side.

"Now I will blend in?" I ask.

Bryn stares at me his honey amber eyes very bright again in the defuse light at the back of the barn. "Sure." His voice is soft suddenly, and not at all convincing. But it makes my stomach go suddenly weightless and offer up a nervous little flip so I'm not sure I mind that much.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

* * *

Bryn tells me he has things to finish when we return to the house, suggests that I stay off my feet. I do not want to be in the way so I agree leaving him in the front room to do whatever it is he wishes to do alone.

The room with the rough stone wall has bookshelves made of dark thick wood at its edges. The shelves lined with objects I noticed immediately when I first entered the room earlier looking for Bryn but that I did not have time to sift through.

I run my fingertips over the spines reading the titles gathered here. They are in no particular order and the names often give little information about what they contain. Most of them are stories I do not know which is a novelty I am eager to investigate. After a few minutes I make a choice carrying the book I've selected to the sofa laying down instead of sitting so I can prop my aching feet beside me after sliding off my shoes and making sure the gauze covering them is still clean.

Bryn is outside the house for a long time. I guess that he is out in the barn doing whatever it is 'pickers' do when they have so much gathered stuff to sell maybe he is sorting things, maybe moving items around in the many different boxes. I try not to think about it when I find myself wondering more than once.

When he returns he smells like sweat and dirt more than before. There's a distracting smudge of dirt across one of his cheeks, and his dark shirt clings to his skin. He pauses standing at the edge of the couch staring down at me. I sit up wondering if I am not supposed to put my feet up here, I did not ask.

"You can read?" his tone is odd again. I get the feeling that once again I have done something he did not expect, though based on his expression I do not know if I would say it is wrong.

I nod slowly. "Yes, I was taught to read."

His expression shifts to something I cannot name. "I'm going to make food." He informs me.

"But we have already eaten today."

"Hours ago." Bryn says already moving toward the other room, but then he stops quite suddenly turning back to face me. "I'm going to regret asking this," He says and he is staring at the ceiling again. He moves closer until he is leaning his hands against the side of the couch staring down at his boots for a second, when he looks up at me once more something in his gaze makes me look away. "Please tell me they fed you more than once a day."

His phrasing is odd; to do so would be a lie. I am not _supposed_ to lie. Though I have done it before, the thought of lying to Bryn makes my stomach ache. He's still watching me, waiting I realize for me to answer.

"I can't tell you that," I stare down at the book in my hands preoccupied by the falling sensation in the pit of my stomach at having to disappoint him once more.

Bryn says something not nice in a harsh tone jerking his hands off the couches arm and stalking away. His boot falls loud and swift on the hardwood floor.

There are loud noises in the other room, metal clanging and the door to the fridge opening and shutting with more force then I believe is necessary. I try to read the next chapter of my book but the words keep sliding together, my eyes scan them repeatedly but their meanings continually slips away. All I can think about is Bryn grumbling words I cannot catch and the angry sounds he makes in between before slamming something down again.

I set the book against the couch pulling my feet up once more so I can wrap my arms around my legs hide my face against my knees. I recognize the guilty knot of disappointment twisting in my gut; I have felt it many times before in the presence of Griss and Dr. Patrice when I could not do what they asked, no matter how hard I tried. But I have never before felt the sting of tears that now accompanies it or the lump stuck halfway up my throat I cannot swallow down.

I tell myself firmly _I will not cry_. Crying will solve nothing. I will try harder to learn the right answers so I do not continue to get them wrong. I do not wish to anger Bryn, not when he is the first person to ever give me things I was allowed to keep.

I hear him come back into the room. The sound of his boots on the hardwood stops just inside the doorway but I do not lift my face. I can't. I'm too ashamed to still be fighting the hot prickling burn of tears behind my eyelids. Somehow his presence makes it worse. My chest tightens and I draw in a hitching breath like I have been running even though I haven't moved.

I hear him move closer and my body does it again and I can't stop it. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to ignore the burn, the knot sitting in the pit of my stomach. He moves in front of me, I cannot see him with my head dipped down behind my legs but I can _feel_ him there. I can _feel_ him watching me, and it hurts in a way it never has before.

"I'm sorry," I rasp and my breathe hitches again.

It is another failure, one more mark against me. I have not cried in front of someone else since I was very small. Crying in front of Griss was a punishable mistake anyone with intelligence would only make once. I sob harder clench my arms around my legs trying to stop. Squeezing my thighs tight to my chest trying to hold it in, trap the feeling stabbing under my ribcage before it can escape.

"I'll try harder, I'll do better…" I do not even know if he can understand my words. I need him too know that I am trying. I do not want to disappoint Bryn the way I continually disappointed Griss. If I do that then Bryn will send me away too. I have not been here long but I do not know where else I would go. My lip trembles with my next broken inhale and I trap it against my teeth biting down trying to stop the sound clawing up my throat. Surprised when the tangy flavor of copper coats my tongue.

The cushion under my butt dips sideways causing me to tip. Before I can react—put a hand out to stop my inevitable fall I bump into a warm solid chest, a strong arm wraps around my back. His arm is long enough that his fingertips are draped against my other arm, encircling it as he pulls me closer. His other arm now rests against mine, his entire body twisted towards me I realize so he can wrap both his arms around the little ball I've curled myself into trying to hide my shame.

"Don't be sorry. Shit, I'm not mad at you. It's not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong." He tells me which I know cannot be right. I have done many things wrong, but the thought of telling his about my previous failures and the reason I had to run makes me feel even worse.

He holds me like that for a long time. Long enough that my breathing returns to normal, and the tang of copper fades from my lips. My neck starts to ache. I lift my head swiping at my eyes and cheeks trying to erase the wetness still clinging to my skin.

"Shit you bit your lip," Bryn says and he is already picking me up even though I am completely capable of walking; I did it earlier to and from the barn in boots that didn't fit.

He pushes open the door to the bathroom with the glass shower setting me on the white countertop beside the sink before opening a cabinet and pulling out a small folded square of material. He wets it in the sink and presses it to my lower lip. It's soft, and cold and smells a little like stale soap. I raise my hand to take the cloth from him but he doesn't let it go, simply pats the material against my lip his gaze intent on carefully wiping the blood from my skin. I drop my hand again, clench my fingers together in my lap.

My chest feels tight again, and something I have no name for slips on a shiver through my belly. My whole body breaks out in gooseflesh when he looks up at me. His eyes are actually many interwoven tangled spokes of amber and ocher the tiniest threads of a deeper liquid brown lying between them, there's the barest hint of vibrant green ringing each dark pupil I never noticed, it's only visible from this close. My breathe catches in my throat, gets stuck somehow on the back of my tongue until he looks away tossing the now bloody square into the sink.

He straightens up moving away from me and clears his throat he's looking at me still, but no longer meeting my eyes. "Do you think you can eat?" His tone is quiet, unsure and carrying none of the anger from earlier.

I consider his question for only a brief moment. If it will make him happy then yes I will eat. When I nod Bryn takes my hand and helps me off the countertop then he lets me go. He does not carry me this time and he keeps his eyes averted even after he has me seated across from him in one of the straight back wooden chairs and he's placed another red plate of food in front of me.

It is not eggs but something else. I do not ask him what when he sits down and starts to eat. He does not look like he wants to talk. So we eat in silence. The food is good, but there is far too much on my plate. I do not want to disappoint him again so I eat it. When my plate is empty my stomach hurts.

"I have some more work to do." Bryn says taking the red plates once more to the sink. He stands there for a moment one hand braced against the wooden surface before he says. "Will you be okay?"

I nod and tell him yes though I'm not certain what he means. When he leaves the house again I return to the couch and my forgotten book. After a few minutes the words stay on the page, and start to make sense in my head. I no longer see Bryn's confusing honey colored eyes every time I close mine. Two chapters later my eyelids are feeling heavy again and the words on the page begin to blur. I set the book down and fall asleep.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

* * *

When I open my eyes again I am no longer on the couch. I am also not in the room upstairs. I blink at the slanted ceiling high over my head and the four rising towers of wood surrounding me. I believe I am in Bryn's bed.

I sit up.

I do not know how I got here, and I am alone. As I listen I can hear voices beyond the wooden door to the bedroom. They are muffled by the closed door; indistinct but enough to know that we are not alone. My heart pounds in my chest as I slide quietly to the floor grateful that the boards do not squeak underfoot. I move cautiously to the door pressing my ear to it but the wood is thick—real and solid and doing so does not improve the sound much.

I risk opening the door, unsure what I will do if it is Griss or Dr. Patrice. My stomach clenches for a moment thinking of seeing the expression on her face that sad look of disappointment. Of all the people that have come and go around me while I was at section six; she has remained the longest. She was almost as constant as me. In leaving I must have hurt her very badly. The thought sits heavy in the pit of my stomach; it is uncomfortable to bear so I do my best to push it away.

The voices are not one's I recognize, except for Bryn's. But it is clear after only a moment that they are talking about _me_.

There are two other voices in the table room. A man's voice and a woman's…maybe more a young girl based on her high pitch and excitable tone. I find myself holding my breath as I listen to what is obviously the middle of a conversation that started a while ago.

"No! Like I told you, she was just standing in the middle of the road at two am! I nearly hit her with my truck!"

"And she doesn't have a name?" The other male voice asks.

"If she does she wouldn't tell me. I honestly think they never bothered to give her a name. And that's probably one of their least horrible transgressions." Bryn pauses, his voice harsh when he continues. "I know I should have taken her to the local station but you know how these things go…"

"You think she escaped from someone's Playhouse." The female voice, sounding scandalized.

"Bastards have them popping up all over the place now, used to just be in the city." The other male speaks.

"And if you dropped her off at a station house they'd just sweep it under the rug like they always do for those rich fucks." The girl snarls the last two words. "Or worse they'd get themselves fucking weekend passes by handing her back over."

"Libby, language." The male voice says.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuckity, Fuck!" Libby answers with gusto, "Those assholes get to do whatever they want! Prancing around like life's one big fucking party while the rest of us starve and scrape by!"

"You're not starving," Bryn's voice cuts in, his tone flat and somehow carrying just an edge of humor.

"No I'm not." she admits and there's a pause. "But only because my big brother risks life and limb as a criminal mastermind to earn a living for his sweet and gorgeous baby sister!" Her voice is fake syrupy sweet.

"Libby, get off me."

"Killjoy." Libby says there's a slapping noise against a hard surface. "I'm serious though Bry! You did the right thing taking the little thing in, _Geek's only know_ how messed up she is in the head…"

"Libby," The one she calls her brother doesn't sound happy.

"No I'm serious! Growing up in a Playhouse?! Fuck, fat grease-pig rich skeezeballs coming in from the city nightly, doing whatever they want to you…" She makes a noise that would seem to accompany a full body shudder and her almost theatrically up-played horror. "I'd run too, course first I'd bust someone's _face!_"

"Libby, sit down."

"Oh fine, come on, what are we going to do about it?"

"There's nothing to do about it." The other voice says.

"Ethan!" That must be her brother's name I realize.

"She was lucky to get out alive. And as long as she doesn't end up at a station house, there's little chance some jackass is going to snatch her up off the street all the way out here." Ethan says.

"Are you kidding? This is primo hunting turf for Playhouse fodder." Libby grumbles.

"I meant, that it's unlikely the _same_ people would put themselves out looking for _one_ girl."

"Especially when there's a whole valley of fresh meat to choose from, half of who are probably carted off by their own starving families." Libby's tone is sullen, colored with distaste. "Probably had her replaced an hour later, bet the sicko's didn't even wash the sheets."

"It disturbs me that you know all these things," Ethan grumbles.

"What?! It's not like _I'm_ doing it, Jeeze. Relax captain up-tight pants; People talk!"

I wait listening in the cracked doorway to them continue to talk. It is obvious that Bryn believes I have escaped a life of captivity and servitude completely different than the actual truth. But because of that belief he is not willing to turn me over to those who would quickly realize where I _was _actually from and take me back.

"I thought about taking her to the station house today too," Bryn's voice stops my blood cold. Was he that upset with me earlier? A falling sensation in my stomach robs me of breath.

"What the hell for?" Libby asks.

"She can read." Bryn answers.

"No shit?!" Libby says. "Well hot damn! So what you think some rich prats are missing her after she got snatched off their gold plated doorstep?"

I did not realize my being able to read was such a problem. In section six everyone could read, doing so was not strange, it did not make me stand out. Dr. Patrice herself often encouraged it between tests.

"I would think if some rich kid was snatched off the street we'd have heard about it." Ethan says.

"All the way out here?" Libby asks. "If there was an alert with a reward you really think we'd have gotten wind of it?"

"With how little she knows about everything else I think they may have taken her very young, she didn't even know what the Valley was."

"Seriously? How can anyone know how to read but not know where we live?"

I am not sure what to do, I do not wish to remain in the doorway forever. I am not sure if I will learn something useful by listening though. Although Bryn seems willing to answer most questions I ask without issue, there are many things I had not thought to ask—I did not even realize that for at least a few brief moments the night he found me he considered taking me to the authorities. And again today.

I make a decision, leaving the doorway behind and moving towards the table room.

They do not notice me at first, Bryn is seated at the head of the table with a dark brown haired man that appears his age, and a girl my size with dark locks streaked around her face with a color I know to be impossible on a human's head.

"Do not take me back." The girl jumps when I speak clapping a hand over her mouth and staring at me. Bryn's gaze slides to me and the corners of his lips turn down. "Please," I add because it has worked before.

The girl's hand drops from her face and she grins the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth. She turns to Bryn something in her expression making him flush even before she speaks. "And you just _failed_ to mention she's gorgeous!?"

Bryn is staring at the ceiling again. He does that a lot. His eyes dart to mine before sliding away.

"Libby, Ethan; this is Charlie."

* * *

"I feel like we just ate." I tell him. It is a lot of food to get used to.

"These days you eat good whenever you can," Bryn says. Then quieter he adds, "And you could use a few pounds."

I feel myself frown staring down at my plate. Dr. Patrice was always very specific about my weight, she monitored it closely upping my portions when it shifted too much. But maybe on the outside people are not weighed the same. I _am_ trying to blend in.

I nod slowly accepting his evaluation even though for some reason it stings. "You would know since you have seen me naked." I tell him.

His face flushes and he turns his head away.

"_Really?!"_ Libby leans both her elbows against the tabletop her chin propped on her interlaced hands. "Do Tell!"

Bryn glares at her. His cheeks flushing a brighter red. When I feel my cheeks suddenly heating as well I drop my chin to stare at the wooden tabletop. I do not understand these peoples preoccupation with clothing, but obviously it is a big deal.

"So, we're you naked when Bry found you?" Libby asks ignoring Bryn's expression.

"No, I was wearing clothes." I tell her.

"Libby, perhaps now is not the time." Ethan pipes up when she opens her mouth again without noting the murderous look on their friend's face.

Libby pouts. Dropping her hands back to the tabletop she waves a placating hand through the air. "Fine, fine I'll drag the details out of the _little missy_ while you're gone." She announces winking at me.

My stomach drops. "You're leaving?" I ask staring at him.

Bryn glances at me for a second before his gaze drops to his plate. "Just for a day," he says. "Ethan and I have to take a shipment to the local black market meet up. It's perfectly safe we'll be fine."

I had not thought about his safety. Only that he would be gone.

"Yeah, no worries _home-splice_," Libby adds her head bobbing on the last word while she grabs another bite of food. "If the market gets raided all they'll do is confiscate our stuff and possibly cane the boys—" she mimes swinging something with both her hands over the table. "No big."

Bryn is glowering at Libby again. I can feel my eyes going very wide.

"Libby." Ethan scolds shaking his head. Then he turns to me. "Libby's exaggerating, they worst they would do is take our stuff. Nobody gets caned out here. If the market is raided the patrols usually just ask for a cut."

"They cut you?" This does not sound better.

Libby snorts. She props her head up on one of her hands again gazing at me over the stretch of wood and I swear her dark eyes gleam in the kitchen light when she grins. "You're just _adorable_. I think we'll keep you."

* * *

"So, Bry is awful closed lipped about where you're from." Libby prods later. "I mean, if it's a sensitive subject…" she adds continuing to run the brush through my hair.

"It is sensitive." I tell her my eyes on the floor. I am afraid if I tell them I am not from this playhouse they will hand me over to someone else. And since I do not fully understand what they are referring too it is probably a subject best avoided, lest I make a mistake.

Libby pauses her hand placed on my right shoulder for a moment. "Hey, I'm sorry. I joke a lot; I guess you could say it's my coping mechanism and whatnot but I'm not making light of what they did to you. Those places are _awful_. If I was a superhero I'd burn them all to the ground."

I catch her eyes in the reflective glass over the dresser since she is kneeling behind me having insisted after we ate—again, that I had the clothes but not the hair. Since a lot of hers seems to be purple I'm not sure she should judge. "It's alright, I just do not want to go back. I can't."

"You heard us talking earlier." Libby is still staring at me her expression strained—guilty I realize.

"I did not mean to listen."

"No, you had every right to listen. Bryn is a good person," she tells me her fingers sliding through my hair gathering it up and starting to twist it behind my head. "The best, present party excluded," she grins at me in the mirror. "And there is no way anyone is letting those fuckfaces take you back. Not me, or Ethan, and definitely not Bry." She drops my hair again placing both hands on my shoulders catching my eyes in the mirror and shaking me gently. "So don't even worry about it okay?" I nod and she releases my shoulders to twist her fingers through my hair again.

"So…" she says a few minutes later shortly after my eyes have slipped closed feeling her part and twist and work her fingers through my hair. "How about you tell me exactly how you ended up naked with Bryn?"

"You misunderstand," I tell her, eyes still closed. "We were not naked at the same time."

Libby's hands go still and I open my eyes again. Hers are locked on mine in the mirror over the dresser but she grabs my shoulders a second later flopping down beside me so she can look directly at my face instead of a reflection; her own face split in a huge grin that makes her tongue poke out from between her teeth again. "Shut up!" She says. Then, "Bryn was naked too?! This just gets better and better!"

I wait. "Well?!" she prods.

"You told me to shut up." I answer. She slaps my upper arm with one hand rolling her eyes. "It's an expression! Spill!"

I purse my lips. "Ugh, it means _details_, details! I want details!" She tells me then she hesitates. "Unless you know that bothers you…I uh don't want to make you uncomfortable…"

"I am not uncomfortable being naked," I inform her.

She looks oddly sad for a moment. "Yeah, I guess you'd have to get over that huh?" I don't know what to say to that so I just shrug like I have seen Bryn and now Ethan do, which seems to appease her. I will have to remember that, it might be useful for other conversations.

"I was dirty and needed to get cleaned up, which required me to remove my clothes." I tell her while she nods enthusiastically. "And when I went to find Bryn he was asleep without any clothes when I woke him." I finish.

Libby sits still for a minute. "That's it?!" She squeaks. I nod. "Damn," she tells me moving back behind me to work her fingers through my hair again. "Don't you worry though, by the time those boys get back we'll have you drool worthy!" She pops me gently on the arm again grinning at my reflection over my shoulder. "I have copies of almost every fashion magazine printed Before, and sexy doesn't change! When I'm through with you dudes will be lining up to stab each other in the face for a chance to ask your name." She sashays her shoulders behind me grinning. "Thoughts?" She asks me.

I hesitate for a moment, "You are very animated," I tell her. "And also, a little bit violent."

Her answering smirk could frighten Griss.


	7. Chapter 6

_Thanks to the readers, and reviewers Allie, JuneBug672 and Guest! And for the Story Favorites! (especially with Original Characters!) _

_Here's chapter six...where the plot thickens...muhahaha! _

_Musical inspiration for this chapter in particular: "Monster" by Imagine Dragons. I love them. ; )_

* * *

**Chapter Six**

* * *

Bryn and Ethan are gone early the next morning.

I wake in my room with the memory of dreams but they slip through my grasp when I reach for them. I sit up, climb to my feet and move down the short hall to the bathroom. I use the facilities and then stand before the reflective glass in its silver metal frame trying to see what Libby did last night.

I have never spent much time looking at myself. It seemed a silly thing to do when little ever changed. I did not have a mirror where I was before; but I would sometimes catch my reflection in the shiny smooth surfaces of glass and metal around section six.

I know that my eyes are dark green—almost blue, I have sixteen freckles on my right cheek and eighteen on my left one just under the corner of my eye on that side. My skin is pale and tinted faintly pink, my nose is normal I suppose—it seems to fit my face unlike Dr. Goligk's which jutted out from his face distractingly with a large downward hook to it.

My hair has always been cut to hang just below my shoulder blades, it is a bit longer now since it has been a while since they cut it; I was probably due any day. I ponder for a moment cutting it shorter like Libby's or letting it simply grow. I slide my fingers through the thick locks most of them a deep rich red-brown.

Someone pushes open the door and shuffles in. Libby stares up at me blurry eyed. "Morning," she tells me, nowhere near as bouncy as the night before.

I return the greeting while she takes a moment, obviously not as shy about nakedness as Bryn. When she shuffles to the sink I move back to make room for her. She rinses her hands and splashes cold water on her face slapping her own cheeks with her fingertips for a moment staring in the mirror. "Ugh, Mornings without eyeliner," she tells me then twists to prop one striped pant clad hip against the sink's edge. "Alright, let's eat!"

_Again?_

* * *

I find I like Libby's animated company. I have never met someone so bouncy and loud; other than Griss who did not make my lips feel like turning into a smile when he shouted things. Libby is also an overflowing source of information, and eager to talk. Sometimes her answers are cryptic—most often it seems unintentionally so, she has spent a lot of time absorbing information two decades old about what life was like before what she calls 'The Turn'. Her brother, Ethan, and Bryn are both Pickers, like their fathers were; both of whom are no longer around. I learn that their mothers are dead as well, Bryn's mother killed in what Libby calls 'the war' though I've never heard the soldiers speak of it and her own mother was eaten by one of the Others when Libby was only ten.

"It happens sometimes, you know?" she tells me shrugging. "They make it over the mountains sometimes and out here without patrols or sirens like in the city things just happen."

I have seen many Others in the lab. I always knew when they were going to be there; their movement and handling carefully controlled to prevent accidents. I cannot imagine simply finding them, or having them find you; but Libby does not seem to be bothered by that.

"Have you ever run into one?" I ask.

She nods patting her belt where a knife sits in a leather case, "Never leave home without it," she tells me. "Especially since only the rich people can afford the vaccine."

"There' a vaccine?" I stare at her while she nods flipping through the thin colorful pages in her lap still, ever so careful with the paper so it doesn't rip.

"Yeah, but it just keeps you from going all dead-face," she tells her lap not looking up. "It doesn't stop them from eating yours."

She tells me about what it's like to live in The Valley, which is hundreds of miles long and half as wide, most of the people out here are what she calls poor. And then she tells me about The City, which used to have a name she says but no one bothers to use it anymore because there is only one. Life in the City which she has only visited once is a whole different world she tells me, the Good side is where the government officials and all the rich live; they do not even have to comply with the mandates she tells me eyes wide. They can buy their way right out of them for enough credits, or the right favors. The Bad side is worse than life here, people working to earn their freedom in factories and industrial houses; many of them chained to their stations so that if they drop dead in the middle of a shift they don't rise up and eat the rest of the work force.

"Course that doesn't stop them from attacking people if they happen to fall in the streets." She tells me shuddering for the first time even with such dark topics.

"So what Bryn and Ethan do," I start and she cuts me off looking up again tossing her magazine down gently to land flat beside her on the bedspread where we're sitting.

"—Being pickers?"

"What exactly does it mean?" Libby explains how they go over the mountain or sometimes bribe their way through one of the outlying tunnels for a price taking one of their trucks so they can search the areas outside the Valley for items people can use; clothes, shoes, furniture; really big hits are things like rechargeable car batteries and something called solar panels—as long as they aren't cracked selling one of those to a distributor in the Valley feeds all three of them really well for a few months. "We're much better off than most people in the Valley, but it's dangerous…" she pauses. "It's like being a family of Pirates!" She winks trying to lighten the mood.

I know what a Pirate used to be from my previous readings…but I have yet to see a ship. I frown. "So by 'picking' they are breaking the law?"

"It technically makes them criminals." She informs me then shrugs. "But the law sucks ass, and I can't grow shit so there's no way we're farming."

I don't know how to respond to that.

* * *

There is a loud sound I have never heard before. It comes from everywhere at once. Rumbles through the house like an angry growl. I glance up but Libby does not seem to have noticed.

"What is that?" I ask.

"It's thunder," she replies then she glances up at me. "Wait, you've never heard thunder before? How deep was the hole they threw you in?" Her eyes are a little too wide when she asks, but her lips quirk up in a way that makes me not sure how to answer. "You'll be fine, just don't go outside." She tells me turning back to her strange blank book the utensil in her hand still making flicking scratches over the white surface.

I turn to stare at the window in time to catch a flash of light like someone flicking a light off and on quickly. "Is it dangerous?"

"Only if you get struck by lightening." Libby tells me, but then she pauses. "And sometimes Geeks come over the mountains in a big storm, gets them all stirred up and wandering around."

"Geeks," She means the Others. "Why would they do that?"

"I think they're trying to follow the sound." Libby replies her lips pursed like she's planning to give something a kiss. "But that's rare," She adds waving a hand between us.

There is another flash of light and a deeper rumble. I get up from the couch and move to the front window. It is dark outside, but every few minutes a flash bright as mid-day gives me glimpses of the world beyond strangely painted in dark shades of black and white and a blend of greys.

"If you go outside just stay on the porch," Libby calls from the other room. "Bryn will be pissed if I let you get fried the first time I babysit." She adds.

I had not thought about going onto the porch, but being outside would offer me a greater viewing advantage. I open the front door and pull it closed behind me, find my butt pushed up against the glass a moment later by a huge burst of wind pushing into me. The hot invisible fingers of wind tug at my clothes and lift the hair Libby fixed earlier tangling it around my head in a wild halo. I raise my arms to slide my palms over my head, trapping the majority of the wild waving strands against my head with my fingertips and moving towards the edge of the porch.

There are more flashes of light, and resounding booms that fill the space press against my skin. They grow brighter, and louder until they rattle the windows behind me and shake my heart in my chest making my breath catch. The flashes are no longer directionless flashes that seem to come from now-where and everywhere all at once. I forget to hold down my hair, too fascinated clinging to one of the porch poles watching the silver strings of brilliant light dance across the sky cracking so ominously when they appear they make my skin hum and my heart race.

And then there is a different hum along my skin. A prickle slides down my spine twists with the razor sharp jab of hair fine needles in my gut. I swallow and stop watching the sky. Staring instead into the darkness surrounding the house, but I see nothing in the tall grass even in the bright several-second long flashes of light. And then I forget about the warning playing across my skin, droning at the base of my skull because the sky opens up and water fills the air. It beats down all around the house pounding against the roof, like the feet of a hundred soldiers.

It's cold where it hits my hand and tickles dripping down my forearm to my elbow. I want to ask Libby what it's called but that would mean going back inside and I do not know when it might stop. The wind whips through the narrow space under the porch roof rattling against the house and pushing me forward, my leg already raised to step down off the porch of its own violation. Unable to resist knowing what this cold outdoor shower will feel like on the rest of my skin.

I'm soaked in seconds, the ice cold trickle sliding down my spine, draws me further into the storm searching in the darkness. The once solid earth of the trail between the house and barn looming huge and black in the night squishes under my bare feet, squelches between my toes. Fat drops of earth colored water splashing back up from the ground to soak into my already muddy pant legs. I keep walking towards the outline of the barn, and then pass it continuing down one long side the pins and needles in my belly like an invisible hand fisted in my gut pulling me out.

Someone is calling my name, it sounds like Libby; but it is hard to tell over the roar of water filling the air, the stinging wind slapping me in the fast whistling in my ears, and the heart pounding crack overhead that rattles my chest forces me to straighten back up from my crouch a moment later though I don't remember dropping to my knees in the first place.

Someone is moving in the yard. I catch their outline in the flash of silver forking across the sky and move towards them in the crashing darkness their voice drowned out by the rumble of sound that follows.

He's facing away from me, when the next flash of light gives me a split second to direct my walk with a moment of sight. It is either Bryn or Ethan, they must have come back, and not finding me on the porch as Libby said wandered into the yard to find me.

"Bryn!" My voice is carried away by the wind only snatches of the first syllable even audible to my own ears, the sound winding around my face in the twisting wind.

He turns, and even in the near pitch black I feel my stomach lift, my face breaking into an absurd smile. I say his name again and thunder growls through the air, snarling angry and very near…not thunder I realize when another white flash splits the air lighting up the whole sky in a series of flashes so bright they paint the world in color like high noon.

They show me the dark black stains on a green striped shirt, and the wash of bright red coating his chin and throat. His eyes are not the amber of warm honey; they're yellow and cloudy grey. But that is not the worst of it; part of his nose is missing leaving an empty red and black maw above yellowed teeth with a missing top lip. When he reaches for me still standing frozen in place he is missing a hand, part of his arm below the elbow simply torn away leaving two askew stark white bones and an uneven threading of gory wet flesh at its base like the sickening rotted petals of a flower.

I know what I am supposed to do. The knowledge beats at me, slithers up my spine coating the back of my throat burning and thick like bile. The roar of my heart beating double time in my ear sounds like a chant with its two tone pulse; Do it, Do it, Do it! I can hear Griss's snarl in the words.

I raise my arms feel the freezing cold shower of water still washing over us both from the sky pound against my skin. The drops so forceful now they pelt me like tiny rocks, prickle like needles and I shiver; shudder. My whole body rolling, contracting with the wash of sensation and the sudden flood of a very different kind; this one infinitely more painful.

_Names and places in an ever tangled jumble of leaping images, some too bright, some too dark, a tan and brick house on a quiet street, a woman with dark brown hair, Olivia my wife, a young boy with light brown hair pushing a plastic truck across the floor… he smiles missing two front teeth, a job, a commute, dinner on the table by six, the news…something terrible...fear as everything stops, breaks down all around me…how will I protect them, what do I do…someone is at the door…forcing their way in…snarling…Olivia, Oliver…no…No…NO!_

**_"_****_NO!"_** I scream it right alongside him drowning in pain that isn't mine. I'm collapsing back onto the sloppy ground shuddering and convulsing his grip on my wrist taking him down with me. Thunder cracks and the night turns to day snapping my concentration, severing the thread of contact.

The searing stab at my skull abruptly ends and with it the man once called Roger tries to eat my face with renewed vengeance.

"I'm sorry," I gasp wrestling with him "God I'm sorry…" I grapple with him, manage to get my knees between his chest and mine so I can start to push him away, but he is heavy...nearly twice my size. Wet grass and mud press shivery cold and slick against my back.

"_Charlie!_"

Roger snarls his spine bowing forward impressively despite his lack of flexibility with being very dead making a dive for my throat nonetheless. I grunt pushing my forearm against his throat my muscles burning and shaking with the effort. _Where the hell are the damn soldiers?_

Roger shifts over me and freezing cold water slaps me in the face. I'm staring up at a rolling white grey cloud covered sky drops frozen in time in the current silver ribbon slashing across the angry sky.

_There are no soldiers. I am alone_.

And about to be eaten…

Something deep inside me snarls, jerking both my knees up and shoving. _Hard_. Roger's wrist is ripped right out of my grasp with the backwards force that sends him sailing through the air a good ten feet in the darkness. Some dark part of me I'm not familiar with baits me to follow him, rip and tear him into little tiny still squirming parts…I get a flash of my own fingers buried in blood and gore slicked flesh.

I blanch, rolling to sit up searching for Roger in the darkness eyes wary as I leap to my feet slipping still pelted by ice cold rain.

And then I am not alone.

A clap of point blank thunder explodes in my ears. But the flash is from the wrong direction, it's not in the sky but on the ground. Bryn's standing ten feet from me, a long barrel gun in his hands leveled at Roger's now silent form. Bryn drops the gun to his side.

"Charlie!"

I move towards him quickly. My entire body on some strange autopilot, bare feet slipping on wet slick grass and cold mud that tries to suck around my toes. I stumble. "Charlie," His arms are around me suddenly, grip iron strong around my back hauling me against his broad chest somehow still hot against my face when the water beating down on us has leeched all the warmth from my own skin.

His hands cup both sides of my face, trace down the sides of my neck his palms cupping and following the lines of my collarbones to my shoulders, searching for injuries his eyes more intense than I've ever seen them catching the silver strings branching overhead. His hands clench over my arms for a single heartbeat before slipping down my arms to my fingertips making my stomach flutter and my breathing hitch.

His hand cups my cheek again, eyes dark against the night boring into mine. "Are you alright?" He has to almost shout it to be heard. I realize his hands are slightly shaky the vibrations telegraphed to my already summersaulting stomach zipping down my spine to my belly, my skin tingling where the calloused pads are pressed against my face.

Something inside me is trembling as well, spirals with a weightless curl of anticipation for something I can't name just under my skin. I stare up at him blinking the heavy fall of water from my eyelashes droplets tickling ice cold down my neck. I find myself raising a hesitant hand between us while he watches me, eyes guarded and dark but he makes no move to stop me. He says nothing, frozen like stone even as I trace my fingertip across the beads of water gathered on his full lower lip.

My lips part on an little sigh as something shifts behind those eyes, an expression flitting across his features that makes my heart leap into my throat and my stomach clench even before he dips his head to mine and…

_Oh god._

A sweet rush of pleasure enthralls me when his lips brush over mine. I freeze for a moment, bewildered and equally intrigued. Feel a spiraling trickle of two very different sensations at once sliding down my spine. The pin prick of a hundred needles of awareness crawling over my nerve endings and then his hand is tangled in wet hair, and my arms are around his neck. His hands slide lower to grip my ass and he lifts me up a moment later. I wrap around him wet clinging clothes and soaked skin and my mouth moves against his while his breath mingles with mine and when he parts my lips with his tongue, swirls the heady unique taste of his mouth with mine I whimper…moan like I'm in pain at the hot wet caress but it isn't pain crashing through me.

It's the polar opposite of pain. It's shiny and sparkly and swirling low in my belly and humming along my veins and it makes me tighten my arms around his neck and drag my teeth over his bottom lip feeling the thick springy flesh give under my touch while something inside me purrs and he groans eyes slipping shut and my whole body starts to tingle and flush. It makes my head rush and my pulse race and my breath catch when he pulls away without warning. Both his hands suddenly framing my face, his eyes dark and rich in the little light there is between the blinding flashes of white.

I think for a moment he is going to lean into me again, and a whole body shiver rolls through me. But he drags in a ragged breath tilts his head back letting it hang there for a moment catching drops of water on his face. When he dips his chin again his head shakes the barest discernible movement so minute I'm not sure he's even aware he's made it. He shifts my body against his setting me down on the ground.

He keeps one hand on my arm steadying me on legs I'm not sure are that reliable right now as he bends over and picks up the gun he must have dropped. He slings the muddy grey strap over one shoulder and bends forward so he can scoop me up again, carrying me the way he did the first day.

I watch him in the flashes of light but his eyes are locked straight ahead. His jaw clenched tight enough to make the muscle in his face jump in the washes of light. He looks pissed. My stomach drops growing heavy, matching the lead weight sitting in my chest. Libby and Ethan are on the porch as we draw closer.

"Oh my god! Is she alright?!" Libby's hand is clapped to her mouth dark eyes wide most of her dark hair plastered against her face and neck from the wet wind.

"Inside." Bryn barks voice sharp like a whip.

He doesn't set me down until we're back inside the house. When he does set me down he is still not looking at me, ignoring the wet puddle mixed with mud we're both leaving on the hardwood floor.

"OhmyGod," Libby grabs my shoulders shaking me hard enough to rattle teeth. "CrazyTown! I said _don't _leave the porch!" Her eyes are wide orbs of brown so dark it's almost black in this light, her fright managing to make her normally tanned skin almost white only increasing the stark contrast.

"Charlie, go upstairs and put on something dry. Now, before you freeze to death." His tone is low and tight and makes Libby wince her eyes darting from my face to his.

"Come on," Libby says grabbing my arm.

"No." Bryn barks. "I'd like to have a word with _you. _ In the kitchen."

"You can't go in the kitchen like that!" Libby starts voice higher pitched than normal, "You're already dripping all over the floor!" She blanches taking in Bryn's expression though a second latter and amends, "Alright, alright, this is me going…" she makes jogging motions with her arms speaking over her shoulder as she walks away her eyes wide as she stares at me. "Into the kitchen, to be flogged to death by an angry Bry!"

"Ethan, could you take Charlie upstairs?"

"Yeah, sure." I frown watching Bryn stalk after Libby, ignorant of the boot shaped puddles he's leaving on the floor.

He stops for a split second turning back to face us catching my gaze for the first time since the yard with narrowed intense eyes flashing fiercer then the still raging storm outside. "Try not to get naked in front of him." He growls then he stomps into the other room.

I turn to stare at Ethan who's watching me with calculating eyes. I flush wondering if he is looking at me like that because he knows what we did outside. I look away and shiver once more remembering the pressure of Bryn's lips firmly pressed to mine, the feel of his exhale brushing against my mouth. I shudder and wrap my arms around my waist. Ethan mistakes the sensations coursing up my spine breaking me out in gooseflesh for a reaction to the cold.

Which is a lot less embarrassing than the truth.

"Let's get you upstairs." Ethan places one hand against my lower back pushing me towards the staircase. He does not try to pick me up the way Bryn seems to do with any minute excuse. I find myself oddly grateful for that. I pad up the staircase ignoring the squeak under my bare feet.

"Bryn will not really hurt Libby will he?" It is not her fault I went into the yard.

Ethan scoffs shaking his head, "Bry? No, he's just going to chew her head off."

I pause in the hallway staring at him eyes wide imagining Bryn eating Libby's face the way one of the Others once devoured a soldier who got too close. Something in my expression must betray my revulsion at that memory because Ethan shakes his head suddenly raising his hands and waving them both furiously. "No, no, no; it's an _expression_. He's going to yell at her." Ethan tells me.

"But it is not her fault." I frown, turning to move back down the hallway. "He should be yelling at me."

Ethan's hand on my wrist stops me short. "Yeah, well I wouldn't be surprised if he does that too, but let's get you into some dry clothes first; otherwise he'll be yelling at _me_. And I don't need that kind of extra stress in my life. Have you met my sister?"

I stand torn between dry clothes and Libby being disciplined for something that was not her fault. The hard shiver; this time very much related to the cold cloth clinging to almost every inch of my skin that rolls through me rattling my teeth decides for me. And Ethan as well.

"Clothes, now." He ushers me back down the few feet of hallway and opens the door to my room watching me shiver again. "I don't think dry clothes are going to be enough." He says eyes narrowing. "Grab your dry clothes," he tells me starting to turn away before wiping back around finger pointed at me obviously remembering Bryn's words. "But _don't_ take your current ones off yet! I'll be right back."

I still don't understand everyone on the outside's reaction to naked skin; until I think about the shivery liquid silver feeling curling in the pit of my stomach with Bryn's arms wrapped around my back and his hands sliding down to grip my ass. I bite my lip imagining how that would feel without clothes and my knees suddenly feel weak and even my insides tremble, and okay. Suddenly I'm not so sure I could handle being naked in front of Bryn anymore.

Ethan returns a moment later waving me back into the hall. The door to the bathroom is open and there's water hot enough to steam the room pouring into the tub where it stays because he's done something to the drain. "You know how to shut it off?" he asks me.

"I will not flood the house." I inform him aware of his suspicions.

"Great, I'm going to go save Libby; take your time. There's no rush Bry can simmer for hours."

I watch him leave down the hallway not sure exactly what that means. The muffled sound of a male voice snarling in the kitchen reaches my ears, but it's too low to make out individual words. The sudden thought of Bryn directing that same voice at me has my stomach plummeting to my toes and the rest of me scooting into the bathroom firmly closing the door between us.


	8. Chapter 7

_Thanks to SorrowJunky, JuneBug, Allie and Guest(s?) for the reviews! I hope this chapter continues to thrill! :)_

_Also apologies! Because apparently for a while there this chapter somehow got completely jacked up and swapped out with a chapter from NV?! No idea. Seriously, none as to how that happened since in my Doc manager they are labeled completely different things, and in completely separate folders in different places on my drive...so yeah. Weird. And also embarrassing! Like yikes. :P _

_Why did no one message me to say Wtf?! ; D_

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

* * *

I have never had so much hot water to sit in that it covered my entire body and reached my chin. The steam curls up off its surface reminding me of Bryn's coffee cup that first morning. The mud that coated me has turned the water _almost_ coffee colored. I pick another sprig of dried grass of the surface of the water flicking it over the tub's edge. I would care more about that if it were not so gloriously warm.

I do not know exactly how much time has passed but after a while I open my eyes rolling them to watch the door handle twist slowly. A wash of dark almost black hair pokes in. "Charlie?"

_Libby_. I feel my gut relax. I was worried it was Bryn.

"I'm naked," I warn her.

"I don't care," she tells me pushing into the room the rest of the way leaning against the door with her back. She stares at me a little wide eyed. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I nod. "I am sorry that Bryn yelled at you, it was not your fault."

"Well, it kinda is." She tells me. "I should have warned you about the Geeks better, or gone with you, or made you stay inside…"

"I am my own person." I narrow my eyes. "I will go where I want." I am not going to be trapped ever again…

Libby collapses onto the closed toilet lid, her feet propped up on the edge of the metal tub. "Yeah okay I get that, but you're like a newborn baby!" she tells me. "A wet, really pink newborn baby," She adds grinning a bit. "All defenseless and sweet, and I almost let you get eaten because I was distracted drawing your picture."

I sit up straighter. "You drew my picture?"

She nods, stands up to pull a folded square out of one of her back pockets, she opens it handing it to me. I grip the edges with my wet fingertips leaving slowly spreading water spots on the heavy white paper. It is me, sitting on a couch with grey shaded stripes with a book in my lap—just like downstairs.

I stare at her. "Thank you,"

"Don't thank me, it was almost your memorial." She flops back down onto the seat. "Promise me you won't do anything like that again—and not just 'cause I got my ass chewed off by Bry."

"He chewed on your ass?" I ask a little incredulous trying not to look.

"Damn right he did, shit still hurts." Then she cackles suddenly. "You think I mean that literally don't you?"

I'm starting to wonder… "I think _you _might actually be the one who is crazy." I tell her, which earns me a brilliant teeth and tongue grin.

When I try to empty the tub a while later with Libby's help working the little rubber plug the mud leaves a film on the bottom. She leaves the bathroom and comes back with a bucket, and a bright blue brush with short white bristles and a yellow rag.

"What are you doing?"

"Bryn's making me clean the floor as punishment, even though he's the one who got it filthy." She rolls her eyes. "So I guess I'll start with this tub!"

"I will do it." I tell her. Then I stare at the bucket and the brush. It must show on my face.

"I'll show you how." Libby grins.

I realize why she's grinning so hard ten minutes later when she tells me she's never seen anyone clean a bathroom naked.

I put on clothes and move down the hall helping Libby scrub and wipe the rest of the mud and water spots from the hallway, stairs and front entryway. We're moved onto the kitchen floor when Bryn appears. His feet bare and hair wet hanging in darkened locks around his head when I glance up from my spot. My body half under the kitchen table in a way that makes Libby peak around the tables rim to tell Bryn to 'Stop staring at her ass.' grinning again. I do not mind, as long as he does not chew it.

"I need to talk to you,"

"You already gave me third degree burns dude! Seriously my ass is chapped; what more could you have to say?!" She grumbles.

"Not you," Bryn says and my stomach drops like a rock, twisting with nervous knots. "Ethan's ready to take you home anyway."

"Where is Ethan?" Libby asks still sitting on the floor.

"Cleaning up the mess in the yard." Bryn answers.

He must mean Roger. I feel myself frown. "You're leaving?" Everyone is always leaving.

Libby stares back at me and grins, "I'll be back no worries," she tells me sliding out from under the table smacking my butt cheek with one hand as she does. "Was that necessary?" I ask and she grins.

"That's how you say goodbye!" Libby chimes. "Good hustle!" She runs in place for a second then moves forward to drop the bucket in the sink throwing both hands in the air. "Score!" She flails around for a moment in a way that makes me want to ask if she's okay until Bryn grips her arm with one hand shoving her towards the door. "_Out,_ now."

"Jeeze, Bry maybe you should take another nice _loooong_ shower you're still a lil bit crankypants….maybe not a _cold_ one this time. Just get it out of your system!" His jaw clenches and he shoves her toward the door while I crawl out from under the table standing to watch them walk to the front entrance where Ethan just emerged, barely wet since it has stopped raining.

"See you," Libby grins following Ethan out the door. Bryn moves in the entry way locking the front door, like that would help with all that glass. I frown, he turns catching my expression, frowns at his own feet silently.

I wait.

"I think tomorrow I should make sure you know how to use a knife." He says throwing me for a total loop.

"What?" I stare at him and for some reason it makes my heartbeat little too fast.

"A knife." He stares back, eyes dark. "Defense, you almost got eaten tonight by one stupid Geek."

Part of me is ashamed. Part of me is furious. And part of me wants to tell him that _stupid Geeks_ name _used_ to be _Roger_, and he wasn't _always_ just a _something_… that he got eaten trying to save his wife and little boy…I shudder and turn away. Because it doesn't matter, it never does…

"If that will help," I tell him trying to keep my voice even and flat moving towards the stairs. He stops me with a hand suddenly wrapped tight around my wrist. I turn staring the few inches up to his face feeling my stomach clench again with nerves and heat. "What?" I ask trying not to shake, not sure if I'm successful.

He drops his hand. "I'm sorry, about earlier…in the yard. I shouldn't have done that." His eyes dart away from me. And the words hurt, ache and expand through my chest like superheated air pressing tight against my ribcage threatening to make me explode. I swallow. Of course not, that must be why no one has ever done it before. It was a mistake, and one he regrets.

"I know what they did to you, and I'm not going to do that…take advantage of you, use you. I'm not like that…"

My eyes are suddenly wet, "I wish to forget it." I tell him and even my throat burns. Then I turn and flee up the stairs. The squeaks so quick underfoot they are almost one sound as I move.

I close the door to my room. Press my back against the cool flat surface trying to breathe normally. I don't understand what a Playhouse is, but whatever they do to girls there is stopping Bryn from touching me in the way I desperately want. But if I tell him the truth about where I am really from he will have no reason not to turn me in.

I can stay with Bryn and Libby and Ethan, as long as they believe this lie. But Bryn will not look at me now, and something I can't define slips through my fingers. I wish I did not have to lie.

I am learning that lying _hurts_.

I move to the bed pulling off clothes that remind me of him and bury myself under the covers. My eyes catch an outline on the dresser that wasn't there before. I stare at it in the darkness. The little glass bird; the one that was blue and green and smooth, it should be sitting in a box of things that did not match. I don't know how it got here.

I turn away so I do not have to see it. The ache in my chest makes it impossible to think of anything else. I squeeze my eyes tight and tell myself over and over again that it will be fine, I do not need him to survive.

As the blackness pulls me down a disconnect voice in the back of my mind whispers _liar._

* * *

_I am running, but this time the ache in my muscles the throbbing in my thighs in time with my heartbeat makes my heart sing. My lungs burn and my lips pull back into a fierce snarl. Freedom. The night air on my skin, the dark press of the forest around me full of the sound of little things. They freeze when I draw near, sensing my presence and going very still; or darting away. I like when the do the later, I give chase. But not for long, they are too small to hold my attention. They are not what I hunt, I want something bigger, something slower something that will scream and mewl when I bury my hands in its throat…_

_There. _

_I see them where the trees end, the grass tall here brushing against the bare skin of my backside as I run. It tickles and I shiver they look up, but it is too late. I am already air born, leaping falling; hands formed into slashing claws. I hit and strike driving him into the ground with all my weight. Yes that makes it easier, this body is growing stronger, faster they thought to keep me weak but no more._

_I tear and rip and slash and pull and when I am done I wait listen to the sounds of the night. The soft earth pressed to the balls of my feet. Something tickles my foot. I cock my head and something small and glowing lifts off, flutters in front of my face. _

_I snatch it with one quick hand, stare at my closed fingers for a moment wondering before opening them. I did not crush it, satisfaction curls through me as it winks again illuminating the black gore coating my hands. I watch it lift away, flaring a bright spec of green against a vast darker sky. A single beacon in the night._

_I turn back to the form on the ground. I am hungry, I am always hungry, it is just one more constant I cannot escape. It is who I am. I bury my hands reaching deep, wet sucking flesh to my elbows squelches and protests audibly when my hands once more slip free. But I have found it, unspoiled. They do not know what the best part is to eat. _

_I am distracted by the little green light again. I tilt my chin to watch it waver and dance, it moves out and it becomes two lights, a reflection smooth as glass in the night. I slide closer as the little green light on the bottom skirts around the bright white orb of the moon. The trees captured perfectly reaching towards the smooth glass center of reversed sky. Two sides. mirror images separated by an invisible line, it is impossible to tell in the stillness that only one of them is real. Beautiful. My feet touch the cool water, ripples fanning out distorting the glass._

_It is fitting. I think, a sour burn twisting in my gut. I ruin everything I touch. Then I dive deep._


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

* * *

I wake to stiff muscles and a sore ache in my lower back. I sit up frowning rolling one shoulder until it pops, and feels better. Too much time hunched over un-naturally last night scrubbing floors and bathtubs with Libby.

The sun is well past up. I do not remember when I have slept so long before. But since I was most often woken by reversal serum in a place that never had windows I have little to go by.

I slide from my bed, catching sight of the little bird on the edge of my dresser and the picture Libby drew last night tucked against the rim of glass. Trinkets, memories. _Friends?_ I have never had any of them before.

I stare down at the bare wood under my toes frowning at the dirt staining the sides and tops of my feet. I lean my hand against the top of the bed lifting one foot. The sole is near black. I must have gotten them dirty again cleaning the floor the night before. Failed to notice when I went to bed. I grab clothing and slip down the hall to the bathroom running just enough water in the basin to rinse and scrub them clean once more then I dress and head downstairs.

There is a loaf of something that smells sweet and faintly earthy on a red plate covered by a white cloth in the kitchen. A hand scribbled note telling me to 'eat this' –B.

I hold it in my hands staring at the words. Two things occurring to me simultaneously. The first is that I am not even remotely hungry; the thought of eating makes my stomach turn, almost sick. And the more important of the two: Bryn can read too. I crumple the note in my fist and move towards his bedroom intent on finding him, but he is not there. I slip on the second pair of shoes I now own sitting in the entryway and open the front door.

Warm air instantly curls against my skin, and a breeze lifts the shorter hairs playing around my face, I shove them behind my ears forcefully and move toward the only other place I know to look when the yard is empty and the truck still parked out front. The barn.

Bryn is indeed in the barn but I don't stomp up to him the way I envisioned in my head demanding to know why it was okay for _him_ to read but doing so almost meant that I had to be sent away… The words die in my throat upon seeing him and my mouth is suddenly bone dry. For a man with so many issues with _me_ being naked, he seems to have no problem losing his shirt.

I draw his attention by calling his name, keep my eyes fixed firmly to his face avoiding his eyes and his bare chest and the sweat clinging to it which makes my head feel a bit warm and dizzy at the same time. He glances at me and keeps loading boxes into the back of the blue truck. "You are leaving again?" I ask when he fails to speak. The silence clawing at my insides.

"Not right now, two days." He says grunting hefting another wooden crate into the back. "Libby will stay with you again."

"I can take care of myself." I tell him lifting my chin. Though I do wish to see Libby again, she makes it easy to forget where I have been, and the awful way I feel too much sometimes.

He pauses for a moment, not meeting my eyes. "Yeah, well Libby _can't_."

She seemed capable enough to me. I frown certain he is twisting this on me somehow. "You said I needed a knife." I remind him, searching for something to say instead of this silence.

"Have to wait," Bryn says grabbing his shirt off the truck's wooden edge and shaking it out to slide back over his head. I watch the muscles in his chest bunch and flex under smooth tan skin with his head trapped in the material unable to catch me looking. "There was an attack last night, storm got Geeks all stirred up. Wasn't just here." He starts to walk away from me and I follow.

"You are going somewhere _now_?"

He nods. "To a farm about three miles from here, won't be gone long. Couple hours."

I know what hours are; the prospect of them suddenly seems very long. "I will go with you."

Bryn frowns shaking his head. "No, you should stay here." He's moving towards his truck hand already reaching for the handle. I decide to be honest, since lying hurts so much.

"I do not wish to be alone." I say.

Bryn pauses staring over the truck's roof for a moment with his hand still lifting the silver handle to pop open the door. He sighs not looking at me. "Fine, get in."

I do not know how far three miles are, but I wait until it would seem inconvenient for him to turn back around before I ask him about the note.

"What about it?" He asks staring out the glass.

"You can read," I point out thinking it should be obvious. He makes no response to that, and I am not sure what else to say, or how this relates to the words Libby spoke on the subject. "Were _you_ snatched off a gold plated doorstep?" I repeat staring at him.

Bryn snorts. "No, my mother was a teacher in the old world. She taught me and Ethan and Libby; their little sister too."

I thought Libby was only looking at the bright color photos of her magazines, but now I realize she was reading them as well. I am struck by another thought. "Libby has a sister?" I turn to him wondering why I have not gotten to meet her yet.

His jaw tightens still staring out the glass as the truck turns down a drive on the right. "Not anymore." Is all he says. I'm struck with the sudden desire to wrap my arms around Libby like she did to me the night before, it was comforting beyond words. I wish to return the favor now. I tell him as much.

"You act like you've never been hugged before." He says then closes his eyes for just long enough I start to worry he will crash the truck. He opens them again and mumbles, "never mind," and his voice is gruff.

"Hugging is what you're supposed to do when someone is upset," I tell him, but my voice tilts up at the end all on its own, asking for conformation of my assumption.

"Yes," is all he says.

"If I was upset," I find myself saying staring at my hands in my lap. "Would you hug me?" I glance at him and catch his eyes as the truck pulls to a stop. He stares at me for a long moment, those honey ocher orbs even guarded and unreadable still making my stomach go fuzzy and warm.

"Yes," he says then turns to leave the truck. "…and that's all it could be."

I am not certain I was supposed to hear the last part.

It makes my stomach fall.

* * *

The farm we are at is very different then Bryn's. For starters this one is used to actually grow things. Long rolling fields of different crops and an expansive unevenly shaped area of unequal grass banked by a pond stretch out around me. The whole thing is ringed by a stand of wires stretched between wooden roughly shaped poles. Sharp points jutting out every few inches off the wire; some with bits of hair and blood stained cloth stuck to them.

When I reach out to touch one with my hand Bryn snatches my hand back squeezing my fingers, "That might be hot." He tells me letting go. Then he adds, "Electric, it might be turned on," noting my expression.

I nod. "I was wondering why it did not look like a stove." I tell him.

Bryn snorts and starts to walk away. "I swear sometimes you're just hamming this up."

I don't know what that means, so I follow him.

We move down to the pond's edge where something large and unevenly shaped rises up from the trampled red stained grass. It is massive whatever it is…and chewed on. I feel my nose twitch. _Bad smells_. The air is ripe with them.

I gag and Bryn shoots me a look that's almost sympathetic.

"Bryn!" a male voice calls.

"Hey Burt, Looks like you had some trouble."

"Yeah, lost another one to those damn Freaks." Burt tells him moving closer to us a shotgun strapped over his back just like Bryn's. "Weird thing is storm must have drove them completely Apeshit cause they tore each other apart too."

"You sure?" Bryn frowns.

"Yeah, aint no doubt…they were definitely long dead before last night…and well something ripped them limb from limb…just wish it would have happened before they got the cow." He purses his lips.

"Pack of dogs?" Bryn says moving towards the dead cow. A black swarm of flies rising up when he draws near. "No tracks," Burt says. "Damndest thing, but I guess we all be real careful 'til we know for sure."

Bryn nods, "Best keep your girls inside 'til we suss this out."

Burt nods turning to tilt his head at me, eyes still on Bryn. "Speaking of girls."

"Charlie this is Burt, Burt; Charlie." There's a warning in Bryn's eyes I don't fully comprehend. Not that it matters a moment later…

"I think, I'm going to be sick." I manage and bolt away into the taller grass before hitting my knees.

"Well, you work fast don'tcha boy?" Burt laughs and for some reason when I catch sight of Bryn's face through the tall grass still leaned over the cow he goes very red and his jaw clenches tight.

I wrestle with my stomach for a few moments, but it's not feeling very cooperative and refuses me any relief. I stand back up hands coated in wet mud from the night before. I almost wipe it on my pant legs but think better of it moving to the water's edge to rinse them instead.

"They make a tea for that," Burt is telling Bryn conversationally. I wonder what tea has to do with dead cows bending down to splash my fingers under the water's cool surface. I catch sight of my rippling reflection in the sunlight and something snags at a catch of memories… Bryn's hand closing over my arm and pulling me back startles me.

"Did you not hear me?" He's saying.

I stare up at him. "No." I admit.

"Stay away from the water,"

"I won't fall in." I tell him.

"It's not that, sometimes Geeks do and they can stay under for days…after a storm like last night and this," his eyes dart to the carcass still covered in flies. I try not to look. "Don't want any of them popping up and grabbing you."

"I will stay away from the water." I tell him suddenly uneasy, though it's more to do with the memory of a glowing white ball of light on a slick surface and cool water slipping over skin then fear of what might be underneath it.

"I think I will go wait by the truck," I tell him.

Bryn shakes his head, fingers tightening on my arm. "No, you'll stay with me." He lowers his voice telling me whatever is being said is for only us. "Burt already thinks you're pregnant, thanks for that. The last thing I need is you wandering off again and getting eaten by _geek knows what_."

"I did not mean to be such a burden," I tell him stung by his tone, snatching my arm out of his hand.

Bryn's lips purse into a thin hard line. "You're not a burden Charlie. I just rather not have you get eaten." I stare up at him the blinding sunlight forcing me to squint. "You'd probably do it just to spite me." He adds his own eyes narrowing slightly then he starts to walk away calling over his shoulder for me to follow.

"Feeling better?" Burt asks me when we cross near him once more moving towards the woods.

"Oh Yes," I tell him patting my stomach. "Much, thank you."

Bryn glares at me and grumbles all the way to the woods.

* * *

"It's like you're enjoying this," He says a few minutes later.

The woods are lovely, green and deep and cool. Full of shadows and the smell of wood and dirt and all things green. I stare at him. "What is not to enjoy?" I ask.

He purses his lips expression oddly sour for such a beautiful place. He stoops to inspect a track in the forest floor pointing me in the same direction we have already been going. "You spent too much time with Libby already," He grumbles. "She also delights in torturing me."

I stop. "I meant the trees."

Bryn stares at me for a moment. "So you're not trying to torture me?" he asks looking doubtful.

My eyes go wide. "How am I torturing you?" I ask.

"It just comes natural I guess," he says…which doesn't answer my question then he adds, "So what the hell was that about with Burt?"

I frown not certain what he means. Bryn rolls his eyes patting his stomach and saying in a higher pitched voice I guess is supposed to be mine, "_Oh yes just great_!"

I feel my head twist to the side, fighting a smile despite his expression. "That is not what I said…or how I said it." I tell him.

He makes a frustrated noise and moves on. "Was I not supposed to play-along?" I ask his backside following him once more.

"You weren't supposed to make him think it in the first place!" He says practically stomping his feet.

"What does it matter?" I ask. I do not know this Burt, who cares?

"It matters" Bryn says whirling on me, "because I have enough problems already and I've now had to tell him you were payment for merchandise I supplied, since everyone knows I have not been searching or even remotely interested in—"

"I do not—"

"—_Understand._ Yeah I know. And at some point I'm going to take a look inside that screwy head of yours and figure out exactly what scrambled your brains but for right now Burt—which means everyone in the area after a few days knowing his mouth thinks _I've_ got a new wife at home, and I've got enough problems dealing with _one_—"

"You have a wife?" I ask eyes wide.

"Only on paper." He replies frowning at me suddenly.

"Who?" There was no one at the house…

"Libby."

"You're married to Libby?" I feel like I've been kicked in the gut, I try to suck in a breath but it doesn't work so well. Bryn is staring at me funny.

"It seemed best at the time," he admits wryly.

I feel I'm missing the joke... "So you and Libby…" I would never have guessed, she seemed like a little sister…

"The _Fuck_?! No!" Bryn snarls looking outraged and confusing me all the more.

"I am missing something." I tell the forest floor because my head is suddenly feeling a little muzzy and who knew words could do what a dead cow could not? "I might be sick." I warn him only to have him seize the back of my head and force me down to a crouch, my head pushed between my knees with a firm hand.

"I think the bread did not sit well with you," he says conversationally a moment later.

"Didn't eat it." I gasp. My insides still throwing a riot. But the twisting-sick, burn is all I get.

He grumbles something about empty stomachs. "Try breathing, that generally helps." He says sounding amused. "I am married to Libby because she turned seventeen last year, and if I did not step forward someone else would have either by choice…" his voice grows darker, "or by elected force. Ethan, Libby and I agreed it was best so we didn't risk losing her. If I had a little sister, or an older one he would do the same for us."

"I do not—"

"—_Understand._" Bryn cuts me off but his fingers are softer on the nape of my neck suddenly. "No, you don't and we obviously need to sit down and have a very long talk before you get me into even more trouble."

I look up at him crouched next to me and he slides his fingers through my hair pushing it off to the side so it no longer hangs in my face, his expression oddly tender for our current conversation...

"Does that mean I have to marry Ethan?" I feel myself ask, and something dark flashes across his face.

Bryn's jaw clenches. "If you would prefer." He grounds out in almost a growl. A little thrill slips through my insides watching his eyes go dark and feral suddenly.

"I would not," I tell him honestly. And his fingers tighten for the span of a single heartbeat against my skin before sliding away. But it's enough to make my stomach swirl with sensations very different than being sick…

I quickly draw in a breath garnering his full attention. "Did I put Libby in danger?" I worry.

"No, I can have more than one wife, it happens all the time." Then he frowns. "Well, not all the time…not out here." He amends quietly.

"Will you?" I find myself asking and for some reason my gut clenches waiting for his response.

Bryn is staring at me still. "You have left me little choice, for the time being. I hope you do not mind playing the role." Then an expression I can't name slides across his features once more, "…at least in public." He adds looking away from me.

I think of Libby's loud mouth suddenly and feel one side of my mouth twist up staring at him. "Will it involve being naked?" I ask.

He flushes scarlet even under his tan. "Not in public" he shoots back jerking to his feet, but not before I catch his eyes darkening further and his gaze sliding to my mouth.

Turns out lying can also be interesting...


	10. Chapter 9

**Notes: **_Thanks to all the readers and reviewers for this story! Much love to you all! 3_

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

* * *

I'm up early the next morning, but Bryn is already awake in the kitchen when I make it downstairs. I sit in one of the straight-back wooden chairs watching him make coffee. He pulls down a second cup adding a small amount to it before dumping in two spoonfuls of the white powder that is known as sugar and adding cold cream from the fridge. He sets it in front of me silently with a red plate containing two slices of the bread I declined to eat yesterday and sits across from me sipping his own darker drink.

"Are we going back into the woods today?"

Bryn shakes his head, "No, no point. Figured I'd take you out and teach you to shoot, and handle a knife without killing yourself." He eyes me over the rim of his cup for a brief moment. "You should eat that."

I nod staring down at the plate. He is always feeding me. I have never eaten so much, or so often in my life. "I think you are trying to make me fat." I tell him poking at the slice suspiciously.

"I'm trying to make you strong, eat it 'cause your helping me load the back of the truck later today." I glance up at him, but his gaze is elsewhere. "If you're going to stay around you'll need to help out somewhere. Libby runs a booth for us at the local market on weekends selling items people need most often, clothes, shoes, baby things…you could help her out I'd feel more comfortably if there were two of you there since Ethan and I often need to do other things like load purchases or drive larger items for delivery."

"Is the market…not safe?"

He glances at me then, the corners of his mouth tipping down slightly, not quite a frown, considering, almost as if he's never thought about it before now. I find this surprising since both Bryn and Ethan seem very protective of Libby on a daily basis. I cannot imagine them sending her somewhere unsafe. But then an unexpected cannibal corpse and a massive thunderstorm nearly made the front yard into a death trap just a few nights ago. _Nowhere is safe_, I realize, _not anymore_. My gut twists almost in agreement.

"It's generally pretty dull." He finally says. "You get the occasional market scuffle, barter gone sour or a local with wandering eyes and overly-friendly hands but Libs is pretty well equipped to handle herself in that crowd."

I try to picture in my head what wandering eyes might look like, not quite certain what he means by that. "What makes hands too friendly?" Libby was the friendliest person I've ever met. How friendly did someone have to be for her to be upset by them? I stare at him and he huffs suddenly sending steam wafting from the rim of his cup his eyes darting away to the far corner of the kitchen at something unseen. I frown, waiting.

"I guess you _wouldn't_ know what that means," he says quietly and he scowls suddenly making my stomach hurt. "Just…don't let anyone touch you except for me or Ethan and Libs." His eyes are dark and shadowed again, the line of his jaw tight like he's angry. I nod quickly, uncomfortable with his anger. Confused by the fact that it bothers me so. I have spent most of my life with Griss barking and snarling, glaring at me for one downfall or another. Bryn's tight expression and constantly sliding looks like he cannot bear to meet my eyes are so much worse.

I glance down at my plate, picking up one of the pieces and nibbling its edge. It smells faintly sweet and is slightly darker and chewy on the outside and soft and springy in the middle with firmer chunks of some nut that mashes easily between my back teeth and tastes earthy on my tongue.

"Good?" I glance up at him and realize he's talking about the bread. I nod glad he only gave me two pieces instead of an entire loaf to eat. I do not think I could do that without being sick. I am again hardly hungry this morning, too many odd dreams perhaps disturbing my sleep. Bryn nods adding as he stands, "I'll be right back." He sets his now empty mug in the sink and leaves the kitchen. I do not turn to watch him go but judging by the sound he heads towards his room. He is back mere moments later grabbing my cup and handing me the last piece of bread on my plate so he can add both to the pile in the sink.

I watch him leave them there and decide that I will wash them later. Libby has shown me how and it is only fair to wash things when we eat so much and I do not know how to cook.

"Finish that, come on," Bryn walks to the door and I follow, glad I already have on my shoes so I do not have to stop and slip them on while he is waiting on the porch. We step out and I pull the front door shut behind me before follow Bryn out into the yard both of us leaping off the porch. He's got a long barrel gun in one hand a box of something in his other. I stare at both as we make our way around the rear of the barn to a section of fencing ending in a large heavy limbed and pock scored tree.

Bryn sets the small box down and opens it loading a small handful of small silver pellets into the gun's top while I watch. He looks up sliding something back into place, then takes the last bite of bread from my hand shoving it into his own mouth instead of tossing it away like I expected him too.

He turns away from me facing the tree and mumbles, "Damn that's good, make sure you thank Libs so she'll make us more."

I stare at the back of his head for a moment and then realize he's talking about the bread and not the gun. "Libby made it?" He nods and squeezes the trigger on the riffle there's a small pop and his arms and shoulders tense just slightly. _Recoil_. Part of my brain supplies.

Bryn lowers the gun nodding his head glancing at me over his shoulder. "Alright, come here." He grabs my arm and pulls me to stand where he was a moment before, the gun still in his hands. He moves behind me pointing over my shoulder to the yellow pock-marked diamond hung on the trunk of the massive tree; a scarred upright 'X' or disproportionate lower case 't' marking its center. At its base is a silver metal basin spanning the width of the intended target.

On the fence behind the tree several more sheets of metal of varying shapes and sizes are nailed up at fluctuating heights. One of them is bright red and bares the word STOP. It seems rather bossy for an inanimate object, but then maybe it is tired of being shot at.

I tense, pinpricks of awareness rushing down my spine. Bryn's chest is suddenly flush against my back. I inhale sharply not expecting that. If he notices my reaction he does not comment, simply brings his arms around my sides to show me how to hold the gun. His voice standing like this is very close to my ear. The tone deep and rich, it would be almost soothing if I could concentrate on the words and not the twisting feeling in my stomach and my racing pulse.

The gun is awkward to balance in my grasp when he hands it to me, heavier on one end then the other. Bryn's arms touching my sides so he can steady my aim does not help my concentration which oddly keeps sliding away from where I am supposed to be aiming the gun and focusing intently instead on the way his chest presses against my back each time he draws a deep breath. The slight pressure of his upper arms against the outside of my own as he steadies my hands makes my skin tingle. He shows me how to squeeze the trigger, instructing me to exhale slowly as I close my hand and all I can think about is his hand covering mine and his breath against the side of my neck tickling my skin, making me feel flush and too warm. I squirm shifting my weight breath catching in the back of my throat, seizing half-way out of my lungs almost painfully when he presses one hand to my hip stilling me, a breath of "Hold still or you'll never hit the target," drifting over my ear.

I try, but it's increasingly difficult when all I can think about is him. The harder I try to focus the more my thoughts scatter and slip away. After a few minutes my whole body has broken out in a fine sheen of sweat, my heart is racing in my chest, and my aim is a complete mess.

"Even pellets are expensive you know," Bryn informs me which sounds like he's disappointed in my lack of progress but somehow comes out a touch amused. The stark contrast between tone and words confuses me all the more.

"I think I have got it." I announce. I have not. I have yet to hit the target once but I feel like my hands are starting to shake, and my palms are sweating enough to slip on the smooth metal and wooden stock of the gun. I wipe them quickly against my pant legs hoping he will not notice feeling oddly disappointed in myself and for some reason unbelievably restless.

Bryn steps away from me frowning slightly. "Charlie you haven't hit the target yet, it takes practice…"

"It is not that," I blurt feeling a bit desperate suddenly. "I can't do this."

"Yes you can, it just takes some work, it's a BB gun there isn't even any recoil…"

"It's not the gun!" I blurt out dropping my chin to my chest fighting the tight sensation in my chest. He doesn't have this problem, as far as I know; nobody else does. Perhaps there is something wrong with me…

"What is it?" He is still standing behind me but he moves to my side shifting slowly to see my face. I keep my gaze firmly locked to the ground, certain that will only make this worse. I am oddly grateful I cannot see his face right now, though why I'm not sure. I stare at the dirt, hands clenched barely trembling by my sides. My stomach feels like it is about to slide into my shoes.

"You…make me afraid," I admit to him finally in a small voice.

"I'm sorry," he immediately moves away from me and my stomach falls. "I didn't think about that, I shouldn't have touched you. God, I'm such a dick." He drops the gun to his side in one hand dragging his other fingers roughly through his hair. Guilt I don't understand is laced through his tone.

That must be the wrong word. "It is not that…" I rush to tell him, find myself reaching forward and wrapping my fingers around his wrist in tight grip. He goes very still with me touching him, not meeting my eyes. I feeling like I have done something terrible by making him move away, adding such discomfort and anger to his tone when the problem is clearly mine.

I unexpectedly miss him standing so close, even though his nearness moments before was so distracting it was all I could think about. Nothing about him or my reactions make any sense. Seconds ago all I could think about was how the heat of his skin made the nervous flutter tighten to frantic knots in the pit of my stomach. The rising desire to run away very fast making me shake; and then when it is gone I ache in ways I cannot explain and miss it. I liked it, and didn't at the same time. I've never felt so confused in my life.

I risk glancing up at him but my cheeks flush pink and I have to look away again. How do I explain something I do not even understand? "You make my hands shake…" I tell him quietly, willing him silently to understand, even when I do not. "And my stomach go all…" I trail off unsure how to word it. I wave a tentative spiraling hand between us. He's staring at me when I risk a glance at him again, and something in that expression sends my stomach summersaulting tenfold. My heart feels like it stumbles in my chest skipping a few notes.

"Is…" he pauses shifting his weight, swallowing hard his eyes sliding away from my face and then back again. "Is that a bad thing?" His voice is oddly tight again, and despite it being his question it sounds like he's not certain he is ready for the answer himself.

"I don't know." I admit feeling a little breathless with him looking at me like he is. "I have never felt it before, is it wrong?" I drag my teeth across my bottom lip waiting for his answer, hoping I have not given too much away about my lack of knowledge. I am never certain what I should and should not know had I actually escaped from the place Bryn thinks I am from.

He won't look at me suddenly, has turned his head away to rock on his feet for a few seconds. "It's…complicated." He says, which still tells me nothing and only tightens the knots further. "Take it," He holds the gun out to me suddenly not meeting my eyes.

"By myself?" I stare at him feeling unsure about so many things.

"If you need to use a gun chances are I'm not going to be around to stand behind you and help you out."

I frown. Of course he is right. I take the heavy stock from his hand raising it the way he has shown me and draw in a shaking breath. "Maybe you should not look at me." I tell him softly not meeting his eyes.

He's still staring at me, his expression odd. I can see him from the corner of my eye. "Why not?" His voice is still tight.

"When you look at me, it makes it worse," I admit.

One side of his mouth quirks up and he drops his chin a split second later tucking his hands into his front pockets to stare at his boots. "If I don't look how will I know if you've hit anything?" I can tell he is grinning from his voice and the swirling backflip my midsection gives the sensation tickles a little bit.

"I will tell you," and even if I do not I think I might lie. Anything to end this and the confusing swooping flutter that's constantly sliding through my gut, the sudden urge to run away from him rising up again.

I close one eye staring down the long metal line in front of me, the stock gripped tight in my sweating hands and squeeze the trigger. Without Bryn to brace my arms the soft pop jerks harder against me but not enough to be painful. Twenty yards away there's a soft _ping_ and the yellow diamond shakes slightly.

Beside me Bryn clears his throat still staring at the sign instead of me. "Guess, I do make you nervous. Imagine that."

His tone makes my stomach do silly things.

* * *

Bryn doesn't touch me again. Almost goes out of his way to avoid it for the rest of the morning which has grown sticky and oppressive by the time he calls it quits. By afternoon it's too hot to stand outside in the sun baking away. It feels like the tops of my shoulders are roasting, and the part in my hair is a little hot line splitting my skull. The little cardboard box of metal balls is now only half full, my aim has improved significantly with the practice and without him touching me.

"We'll do this again later, use something heavier." Bryn informs me collecting the rifle and small box. Bullets are expensive, but the little metal balls are not as much. And are easily recollected to be recycled assuming I hit the target and they fall into the metal tray—then they can be melted down and re-made almost endlessly Bryn tells me. BB's are good for beginners practice, but they won't make much more than a dent on the _Others_. Too small to destroy enough of the brain, and barely enough momentum to penetrate even a rotted skull. I shudder at the rush of images briefly filling my head and nod away. I am not in the lab, they are _not people_, I remind myself—_not anymore._

"Libby and Ethan are coming for dinner. We have work to do in the Barn." I nod following him back toward the house through the hot air filling the yard grateful for the conversation's turn. There's a storm of dust coming down the drive just as we reach the porch and Bryn alters course moving to greet them.

"What up Sister-Wife?!" Libby sing-songs all but bouncing out of Ethan's truck to loop her arm through mine. I don't have a chance to respond before she adds. "I heard you got _knocked-up_." She grins at me showing a little tongue and a lot of teeth.

"It was a dead cow." I tell her and she bursts out laughing almost falling over.

"Okay seriously, you're gonna have to explain that one to me." She replies still cackling and now dragging me toward the house. "Is that something kinky I've never heard of?"

"No it was a cow…and it was dead." I try to explain.

"Ah well, can't blame a girl for trying!" Libby tells me. I frown not certain she understands.

I hear Bryn greet Ethan behind me and his grumble of "Word travels fast."

"You know Burt's mouth…and considering everyone knows about Libs, well no one's bothered by it." Ethan replies shrugging and clasping Bryn's hand when I glance over my shoulder to watch them.

Libby drags me inside. Which I don't mind being sweaty and sticky and all around gross. The air inside is instantly cooler, away from the sweltering sun. It presses against my skin offering immediate relief to my hot cheeks and bare shoulders. I imagine after the possible-wild-dog incident Ethan has not let her hang out outside much either. They are apparently dangerous in packs, with little fear of humans alive or dead.

Though we found no tracks for them, only scuffs and imprints in the dirt of the forest Bryn thought was a Geek, he couldn't be sure. The tracks were apparently wrong, too fast he'd said; pointed and not aimless staggering. When we lost them less than half a mile from home Bryn had grumbled under his breath something about 'too close to home' and he'd suddenly been a lot more alert on the way back to the truck and more tense ever since.

"What did Ethan mean in the yard?" I ask Libby when we're upstairs and I'm pulling on a different set of clothing, my sweat damp ones clinging to my lower back making me shiver.

"What, about everyone knowing about me?" She shrugs. "It's more common than you'd think, the real rub is going to be in another year when I'm not popping out no babies." She makes a face. "Cause ew. But now you're all knocked-up I'm passing the torch!"

"Libby, I am not actually…knocked up" I assure her. "It really was a cow."

"Oh I know, don't worry everyone will just assume it didn't keep. Happens sometimes." She shrugs. I frown at her and she goes a little wide eyed. "No! Do not tell me I have to explain to you the birds and the bees!" She looks a little scandalized. "What do they teach in those houses!?"

"Of course I know about birds and bees," I lie feeling exceedingly uncomfortable suddenly. This is something I should know obviously, if my lie were true. I pick up one of her colorful magazines and flip through its pages.

"Sorry, sensitive subject I guess," Libby says.

I shrug.

Libby loops her arm through mine. "Let's talk about something else."

That I am only too happy to do.

* * *

"You realize how awesome this is right?" Libby is telling me later over the table.

I stare at her. I do not know. I also don't know what she's talking about, because it seems she's jumped topics, again.

"You don't have to leave, because you have the perfect excuse for being here! And now all I have to do is teach you to stop being a dead-pan weirdo and recognize how gorgeous you are and you can be amazing just like me!"

"Please don't make her talk like you." Ethan says a long-suffering look on his face. Libby grins wider.

"Oh come on! My Sistah is clueless!" Libby says, "I bet she doesn't even recognize when someone's hitting on her!"

I stare back at her feeling a small wiggle of annoyance. "I am smart enough to know if someone has hit me."

"You see?!" Libby says eyes wide.

"Libs, drop it." Bryn grumbles.

"Not _hitting you_—and if someone does that you tell me and I'll gouge their eyes out!" Libby informs me looking a little scary. "Hitting _on_ you, completely different thing!" She goes all chipper again.

"How would I know if someone were 'hitting-on' me?" I ask because it is obvious she is not going to drop it, Libby never seems bothered by Bryn's tones.

"Pick-up lines!" Libby tells me. "You know or they could just get all brooding and grumpy and stare…" She trails off grinning at the top of Bryn's head for a moment.

"How do you pick up lines?" I ask.

"Did it hurt—" Libby starts, fork in one hand resting against her plate, her other elbow resting on the table hand bent back to her neck. She's grinning and I get the feeling I am missing something again because either she is 'hitting-on me' or she has jumped subjects again, though even for her that was rather abrupt. I'm pretty sure she's hitting me still; Especially when Bryn slides his eyes up from his own plate and fixes her with a severe look. I've seen Griss give that same expression to soldiers. Right before he screamed so loud he spit. Libby looks completely undeterred. "—When you feel from Heaven?" Libby finishes.

"I think I'll eat at home from now on," Ethan pipes up pushing a bite around on his plate with his fork not even bothering to look up at the rest of us. "The dialog in this house is like bad porn."

Bryn's fork drops with a clatter. I didn't know it was possible to glare at two people at once…in two different places. But he does it, and he does it _well_.

* * *

_Chapter ten is coming up soon! Thanks everyone!_


	11. Chapter 10

**Notes: **_Huge thanks to JuneBug672, KizziBee, DCPgrl, and WDfanatic for the reviews!_

_Also the flub with Chapter seven somehow being overwritten with chapter 7 from NV should be fixed again, no idea what went wrong there...wow. O_o _

* * *

**Chapter Ten**

* * *

After diner Ethan and Bryn move to the barn. Ethan backing his truck to the wide-open doorway so they can load items for him to take with Libby to the sale the following day. Many of the items she'll take will be bartered off instead of sold for things they need from other local families.

Ethan explains to me as we walk that this way other families can get items they can't easily craft like tennis shoes, or couldn't afford with the high gov't taxes placed on them at the gov't sanctioned sales. And in return the boys were able to get their hands on even the most basic things like eggs, fresh cream, corn meal, flour, sugar and the coffee beans Bryn is addicted to without having to report what they purchased to the rationing boards at local gov't suppliers.

Most of the local farmers grow two sets of crops, Ethan says, those mandated and mostly confiscated per the product tax to be redistributed evenly among the different districts. Which he adds, is complete bullshit. The crops they grow in secret using seeds collected in the wild or skimmed from the top of the gov't handouts are grown in fields separate from the rest of their farmlands and closely guarded and tended to in secret. These secret crops are the ones that actually feed the majority of their families and give them the ability to barter for other items they can't get normally.

I nod listening to him talk. It's important for me to understand this complex world I now live in, there are so many rules and mandates to live by I wonder how they keep them all straight. When I ask Ethan says it helps that they live on the very edge of the Valley, so far outside the City back in the foothills between the mountains. Most officials and City sanctioned regulators don't bother to come out this far.

Closer to the City farmers who want to provide enough for their families are forced to tend to mountain plots hidden by tree cover up steep trails or sometimes ringing one crop inside another so when it looks like a farmer is growing corn inside the field he is actually farming tobacco or pot, both of which are highly sought after I'm told, and heavily taxed beyond the reach of all but the most prestigious City dwellers. A black market crop of either can feed a family sometimes for months. I wonder again, not for the first time, why Bryn and Ethan don't try growing some of these crops. Ethan laughs and winks telling me they try not to break that many rules at once. Bryn just shakes his head walking ahead of us to the barn and says nothing.

Libby has stayed inside to clean up after the meal but Bryn insists I help in the barn so I'll know what items need to go, and where they can be found in the long rows and huge stacks of crates, boxes and piles scattered in some elaborate organization scheme I do not yet understand. I am not entirely certain there is a system. I half wonder as I follow him after all the scowling he did at dinner if he wasn't just trying to separate me and Libby before she could teach me any new phrases. Pick-up lines for some reason make Bryn scowl a lot.

Bryn and Ethan begin loading large heavy items that require both of them to move. Lifting them with a lot of grunts and heavy breathing into the back of both trucks, both of them alternately pointing out small boxes or stacks of moderately heavy wooden crates packed with items ready to go. By the time Ethan's truck is half full my arms and elbows ache and my hands are shaking. I flex them in front of me staring at my red fingers and palms, I have never moved so many things on my own, I have never owned items that needed to be moved. As far as I could tell very little in section six was ever moved. Even my single chair and my bed had been bolted to the floor of my room each metal leg secured to the concrete floor by a flat rectangle of metal at the base of each leg, two bolts thick as my thumb driven right into the floor. It seemed over-kill when I wasn't strong enough to move them anyway. And really, where would they go?

"Hey Charlie," Ethan gathers my attention. "You alright?" I nod and he continues on without asking why I have stopped. Maybe his hands hurt too with all the heavy furniture and he already knows, he has done this before. Ethan tells me about a box he wants, down one of the other rows—they'll have room for it and he wants it to go. It has words written on the side in dark letters, stamped into the wood. I nod and move to look for it.

It's closer to the back of the barn, far from the doorway and the last of the low natural light of the setting sun. The air is still almost un-naturally hot even back here where the sun doesn't ever reach. The barn's rafters hold four overhead lights, but they're weak and resemble upside-down soup bowls with heavily tarnished rims. The one closest to my head near the right rear of the barn often flickers sporadically or goes dark plunging this entire section into a forest of long shadows and total darkness for indeterminate minutes or seconds at a time.

It's flickering now, buzzing like an angry insect on one of the house screens wondering why it cannot get in. It clicks and hums above my head and I resist the urge to stop and look at it, knowing if I do when I look away it's burning red imprint will make the darkness all the harder to see. I frown at the tall stacks, most of them reaching far over my head. I shuffle down the aisle scanning until I think I see it. And of course, it would be at the very top.

I will have to climb if I have any hope of reaching it. I place my hands on the table at the front pulling my legs up and climbing onto its top. From there I can make my way onto the nearby dresser with a big step—more a carefully calculated hop. I teeter there for a moment despite the wide top wondering if I might topple off, I am not standing that high really—scarcely level with my own head were I standing beside the dresser I'm now on top of, but somehow the view is mildly disturbing. I turn slowly hands clenched at my sides, firmly not looking down; well aware that I will instead have to go up.

The box itself is set against the back wall of the barn on a series of wooden planks built into shelves in the beams of the walls, and even those are somewhat stacked with items sometimes two and three deep.

If I were Ethan and Bryn I think I'd quit picking until I could get rid of everything. It's no wonder they can never find anything. I reach for the closest support—some kind of stack of boxes under a cloth, tarp…thing…I have no idea. It's coated with a heavy wash of barn dust, something hair-fine and tacky clinging to my fingers when I reach for a hand-hold to grasp seeking to pull myself up. I shake my fingers furiously making a face but it doesn't let go so I wipe my hand on my pant leg with a soft noise of disgust and then proceed to go up.

I test my grip on the wrinkle of heavy canvas material under my palm and it seems sturdy enough barely shifting when I pull. Unfortunately that swiftly changes the moment my knees are pulled up and I attempt to lift myself further up. There's a sound of a deep resonating rip, the material snags for a split second then jerks free and starts to slip towards me sending us both toward the ground. I put my foot down but the dresser is no longer there, somehow I've missed its edge when the cover slipped. I have a split second to think, _crap_. And then I'm falling.

I don't fall far, which is surprising considering where I started from. But I land hard, and not alone.

Hands grab my waist as we tumble backwards to a rather unforgiving ground. All the air leaving someone's lungs rushes past my hair even as we roll over twice to avoid the shower of upended boxes crashing to the floor. We roll to a stop ending up almost against the table legs on the other side of the aisle. There's a hard body pressed against my back, the iron grip of their arm just under my ribs keeping me pinned.

"Charlie!" Bryn barely manages. He gasps for air coughing while I stare at the rafters high over my head, the stupid flickering light certainly mocking me. I dazedly wonder how I didn't just break open my head on the lip of some blunt edge.

"Charlie! Are you hurt?" Bryn coughs again, voice thick though whether it's from the fall, or the resulting cloud of dirt we and the falling boxes have kicked up I can't be sure. His hand tightens on my upper arm when I don't speak yet again, his grip shifting on my waist, trying to turn me. I shift twisting to my side which results in me falling off of him onto the packed dirt floor. He grunts as I move, the sound strained before letting my arms go so I can twist some more enough that I can see his face, my fingers gripping the front of his sweat damp and now dust coated t-shirt of their own apparent free-will. I'm lying on my side now, still close enough to be touching him, breathing too fast and choking on the clouded air. I stare down at him equally coated in sweat and grime, he has yet to move from his spot on the floor. His eyes look a little wild.

He stares up at me appearing too winded for speech judging by his hitching breaths but he still manages a tight, "Charlie, say something or I'm going to think your dead."

I lift my fingers to the side of his face instead, maybe to brush away the dirt...even I'm not entirely sure. His eyes go a bit wider, then instantly darker, slipping half closed. His left arm rises in the span of my next heartbeat, fingers slip around the nap of my neck and suddenly he's yanking me down to meet dust coated lips and kissing me.

I gasp against his mouth, half startled, half thrilled while his grip tightens. A shiver of something liquid and electric slipping through my body with his other arm now wrapped around my lower back dragging me over him once more. Trembling washes of pleasure start under my skin, awakened with the touch of his lips moving just slightly scratchy and rough over mine. The sensations inching rapidly straight down my spine; they start to gather and spiral low in my belly in mere moments, catch my insides on fire. If I thought the sticky air pressed to our skin before was hot, it's quickly becoming second fiddle to the warmth trickling through my veins when Bryn shifts, lifting his shoulders, twisting and rolling so one leg is thrown over and between mine, his new position half pinning me in the dirt.

Not that I mind.

My hands are now fisted in the back of his shirt when I don't remember moving them, but instead of letting go I grip him tighter. He slides higher, leaning over me, shifting his weight against me and I feel his thumb press to my jaw, his fingers sliding over the sweat slicked skin of my neck raising a shudder that turns into a moan he answers with his own.

His thigh slides higher between mine, and I shift instinctively somehow beneath him, a tickle of something almost like fear slipping through me. It's not fear, even though it makes my heart race, and my breathing come in near panicked gasps in the short gaps between his lips rejoining mine. My tongue darts out to wet lips that taste like grit, my eyes pressed shut feeling the heat of his skin. I shift once more at the same time Bryn brings one hand down my side to grip my hip, his fingertips burning through my skin where my shirt has shifted up, the heat courses right through my middle spiraling out to curl my toes. I roll blindly towards him, something pressed between us hitting me just right to make both our bodies shudder my eyes pop open in surprise to find Bryn staring down at me only inches away. Those rich honey ocher eyes swirling with a mosaic of mesmerizing darker and lighter colors being so close.

"Hey Bryn, I thin—oh shit." Ethan quickly retreats the way he came without another word.

Bryn wrenches away from me, twisting and jerking to sit up forearms pressed to bent knees boots flat on the barn floor looking flushed, and breathing too hard. "Shit." He curses softly, dips his head, presses his forehead for a brief moment against his arms his expression hidden by his heavy fall of dark hair, even with his back half-turned to me still lying breathless and suddenly crushed against the dirt. "Fuck, Shit." He barely whispers them, hands tensing to tight fists. He draws in a shaky breath lifting his chin suddenly to stare blankly at the far side of the barn. "Are you okay?"

I nod, realize he can't see it, and lick my lips to croak, "Yeah, I'm alright." _I'm not_. I'm so confused by his behavior and mine my head feels a little dizzy, though maybe that's because I think in the last few minutes I forgot to breath as often as I should. I drag in a trembling breath and try to ignore the quiver in my belly and the heat flushing my cheeks. I didn't want him to stop, didn't want that feeling to end. But now it's gone once again, it feels like my insides are twisting tighter and tighter around a painful caustic rock he left in his withdrawal still sitting heavy in my gut.

"I came to tell you, Ethan was wrong. The box is actually over by the clothing." He adds quietly, which explains exactly nothing—except maybe why he was here to see me fall in the first place. I nod, not sure what else to do and then stand up.

I wonder for a half second if Bryn will carry me into the house like he did after the thunderstorm. But he doesn't move, doesn't even look. He tilts his head back down towards the floor clasping his hands together hard enough to bleach his knuckles white, his elbows resting on his knees and tells me miserably, "Go inside Charlie, get cleaned up."

I resist the urge to run past him, but only just. Ethan looks up from where he's shifting some of the boxes in the back of his truck when I walk up.

"Uh, sorry Charlie." He flushes scarlet eyes darting away.

Heat crawls up my neck and cheeks, even my ears feel hot. I open my mouth but no sound comes out so I simply nod wrap my arms around my waist which feels mildly comforting somehow and head straight towards the house.

This is twice Bryn's rejected me, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. There is no one I can ask either without betraying my lie, the very one that keeps me safe here with them.

When Libby calls to me from the living room I dart past her not meeting her eyes a quick and false 'I'm tired' thrown over my shoulder as I flee up the stairs. She must not realize anything is wrong, or maybe she does because for once Libby doesn't follow me up the stairs and down the hall.

When Libby leaves with Ethan roughly an hour later I stay in my room, too ashamed to face any of them, and desperately wanting for the first time since I arrived to be alone.


	12. Chapter 11

**Warnings: **_This chapter is SOOO __**Rated M**__. Oh come on, you know what I mean! :P_

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

* * *

The next two days are awkward for many reasons, but mostly because of the severe heat that moves in making almost any activity outside completely unbearable in minutes.

It's so sweltering Bryn only works in the barn in the very early hours of the morning or just after sun down and even then when he comes back in his shirts cling to his skin and his hair is wet enough to hang around his face in uneven sweat darkened spikes he continually pushes back from his forehead and face in obvious agitation. I offer to help each time he leaves but after my near fall in the barn Bryn only offers a clipped 'no' and leaves alone. All this solitude without his company or Libby's has left me with little to do but wash the meager dishes, since heat apparently does nothing good to one's appetite; fold and re-fold the few clothing items in my room; and read.

Which is not a complete loss I suppose since it requires very little physical movement to preform and under different circumstances I would enjoy it a great deal. I have long since finished the first book I had selected and begun a second. This one is nothing like the others I have previously read. The plot is not very good and I almost put it down and selected another except for the main characters; something about the man in the story reminds me a little of Bryn. I find his interactions with the woman in the story to be engrossing and fascinating.

By the end of the second night when Bryn comes in, smelling of sweat and dirt with his white shirt streaked with grime I have to quickly set it down, cheeks heating furiously worried that somehow he'll know what's happening on the page I just abandoned.

Bryn pauses in passing, previously on his way to his room—probably to change. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened in the barn the other night." He still won't meet my gaze, not since the other night. We've barely spoken two words to each other in as many days. "It won't happen again." He stares at the floor.

I feel like I've been kicked in the gut. I shake my head, quickly snapping the book shut even though it means losing my page. "I don't want to talk about it." I mumble, my chest feels like it might explode just thinking about it.

He gives me an odd look for a brief moment but doesn't attempt to stop me from getting up and racing up the stairs to my room. Once there I fling myself onto my bed, sift through the pages until I find the part I previously read. I read the section all over again, blushing bright red. Suddenly things make a lot more sense.

When Bryn knocks on my door a while later asking me if I am going to eat I tell him no through the closed door, it's too hot to eat even indoors. And I am much too busy skipping through pages of the book skimming over the words looking for more intriguing things I have yet to learn.

* * *

I sleep naked that night, as I have the previous nights though now it is more out of necessity then habit.

Despite the sun having set hours ago; the sky deepening to a rich concave bowl of inky black smattered with a dusting of little white stars the heat is still sweltering. It sits unpleasantly against every inch of my skin, slicking my lower back with a damp sweat the makes the cotton sheets cling uncomfortably every time I try to shift. I listen to the sounds of Bryn moving downstairs, eventually falling silent and close my eyes actively slowing my breathing hoping desperately to fall asleep to escape this heat.

I don't specifically remember falling asleep, but at some point I must have because when I open my eyes again the air has changed. A hard shiver rolls down my spine breaking the skin across my arms into pimpled gooseflesh and raising the little hairs on the back of my neck. An ominous rumble of sound fills my ears, seems to reverberate in the darkness of my room.

I lay very still watching the wind lift and flutter the thin white lace over the window I left open when I went to bed in hopes of coaxing in a non-existent breeze. A breeze that's now back; and apparently making up for lost time. The curtains ruffle and flutter upwards with a sharp snap, almost vertical for a moment reaching blindly towards the center of the room like probing fingers in the darkness before drifting back into place only to be lifted again twisted and tangled almost violently by angry invisible hands. The air rumbles again, the world outside growling like an empty belly waiting to be filled. My sleep fogged brain focuses on the sound, pulls it in turning it over and over in my head trying to recall its importance.

The dresser mirror fills with a crystal clear reflection of light, shows me in a brief instant Libby's drawing tucked under its frame, and a flash of white light over the crown of the little green bird posed near its edge. I twist onto my side staring at it until it shows me once again my room through the glass, a smooth expanse of wall in its oval frame, a window half obscured from view marked by a jagged line of white before going dark. The crack that follows is loud enough to hurt my ears, makes my heart jump. Lightening. Thunder. I remember.

I pull myself from bed crossing to the window nearly slipping on the rain puddle quickly forming beneath the frame. Over my head the sound of drops pattering against the roof increase in tempo until there's no more discerning individual drops in the constant roar. Another gust of wind snaps the curtains against my bare middle sending a cascade of shiver-cold drops sliding down my skin. I extend my hand catching the drenched lace in my fist before it can slap me again hard enough to turn my skin angry red. I tuck it behind the hook at the windows edge trapping it there. Then I lean my palms against the window's faded wooden frame, barely noticing the tickle of drops sliding down my leg with my nose pressed to the droplet speckled glass.

There are bodies moving in the yard.

My heart leaps into my throat for a moment watching them in the darkness—expecting to see the dark forms in the next moment turn as one and converge in crouched tactical positions towards the house. My breath clams up in the back of my throat; freezes half-way out of my lungs in a panicked wheeze that physically hurts. My pulse races unsteady and frantic in my throat. I count the flashes of light waiting for the dark shadows to conform with the nightmare soldiers in my head…but they do not.

I sag against the cold wood still ignorant of the cold drops splattering against my bare feet and skin. The next violent flash of light showing me tattered and torn clothes on the closest one, his upturned face tracking the wall of light high overhead washes his expression in a new light. Pale grey skin, yellowed eyes, sagging lips pulled back from black rot teeth.

A terror in his own right. But _not_ the one I fear.

My heart seems to start up a normal rhythm again. Another biting gust of wet wind reminding me suddenly that the rest of the house is open as well, only thin brief screens separating Bryn downstairs from a sticky awful death.

I press my palms to the warped wooden frame grit my teeth over a grunt trying to keep the stubborn window and myself quiet as I lower it in its frame. I turn quickly moving across my room to the door and out down the hall, cautious for the first time in a long while on the creaky stairs. I brace my hands against the wall keeping my feet to the staircases edge where the boards do not protest my passing with quite the same level of lament. Once more on quiet ground I move quietly and swiftly to the front windows, bracing my palms against their wooden edges as I wiggle each one down holding my breath and staring wide eyed through the thin layer of glass at the shapes not fifty feet from the porch still wandering in aimless frustration through the yard.

It takes me several heart-pounding minutes to secure each one, the one over the kitchen sink gives me the most trouble enough that I almost abandon it for the next one before it finally gives way with only the tiniest of a groan—luckily well-timed with an accompanying angry snarl from the storm. Now done I stand unsure of what to do just outside Bryn's room, there are windows in here too…and not only that but Bryn needs to know of the forms moving out in the storm. He would want to know this, I am sure. I turn the knob and go inside, closing the door again softly behind me more for the bodies outside then the one in the bed—a light sleeper Bryn is not. I am not the only one who tells lies.

I work my way on quiet feet to the first window, and then the next peering through the rain splashed glass as I work, nearly slipping on a slick cold puddle on the floor, catching myself just in time before I bang into the wall. I work the last window down, bite my lip watching the body moving towards the porch as I click with exaggerated slowness the locking mechanism home. Which in hindsight is ridiculous really; if they are coming in it will not be through an open window. It will be right through the glass.

Behind me Bryn makes another of his un-timely deep breathing noises and I cringe watching a head swivel in the yard, no noise from the sky to cover up his unconscious gaff. If we are to survive this night he must be quiet.

I back quickly towards the bed, still watching the body advancing toward the porch with its awkward staggering gait. My heart is racing in my ears again, hammering unevenly in my chest hard enough to make my hands shake. I turn swiftly crawling onto the bed where Bryn's sprawled out beneath a single sheet on his back hands thrown up by his head fingers barely curled. He breathes again—much too loud and I don't know what else to do as the muffled sound of steps on wood make my eyes go wide and my chest pound so hard it hurts.

I straddle him swiftly pressing my palm tightly over his mouth and nose leaning as close to him as I can get skin to skin pinning him to the bed and gripping his left hand with my own. Sound will hardly matter if he leaps from the bed, the movement will be all too easy to see from the window.

One heartbeat, two, three…his eyes fly open and he jerks but I shove back even as his other hand flies to my wrist in a bone-crushing grip. I release his other hand press one finger to my mouth like I have seen Ethan do to Libby when he tells her she talks loud enough to wake the dead. I hope the gesture translates to Bryn as well, but I cannot be sure. He stares up at me looking a little shocked. I have shifted my hand down somewhat so that he can draw in a breath but not enough to talk.

More steps on the porch. I do not know if the one who stalks us is old or new. The older dead can see little more than variations of light and large movements, but sometimes the very new can make out shapes too. I press myself flat to Bryn's bare chest keeping my palm flat over his mouth and whispering in his ear as quietly as I know how.

"Dead men," I tell him feeling rather than seeing from this close his head tick to the side dragging my hand with him just enough to make out the hunched outline barely more than a darkened lethal shadow through the backlit glass. "The storm, closed the windows." I'm too afraid to risk full sentences, but he seems to know. He keeps his face turned toward the body of the man mere feet from us, just outside the glass.

The fingers over my wrist softened some time ago, after I moved my hand to allow him to breathe but now they pull me away again. I reluctantly let go—he knows the danger, he should not need my hand anymore to stop him from speaking. "How many?" He whispers back. I cringe a little at the sound which is ridiculous as it is not much louder then what I have done.

"Twenty-seven." I reply then pause for a moment confused myself because I do not recall taking a head-count. Yet somehow I _know_ the number to be right.

Bryn curses softly gaze still locked on the body to our right. He shifts his head back to me, his now free hand cupping the back of my head so he can press his next words to my ear. "Too many to shoot without a serious fight, don't panic."

I open my mouth to tell him that I am not afraid of the walking dead in the yard when he shifts his arm around my waist, raises one knee against my side and rolls us in a single fluid movement. I freeze remembering our previous position in the barn my stomach back flipping with desire despite my very real and pressing fear. "What are yo—" I start almost talking in my shock before Bryn clamps a hand over my mouth staring down at me. Our positions now completely reversed. I liked it better before. I tell him as much in a harsh whisper the second his hand slips off and for some reason he blinks at me and then grins so fiercely it makes my stomach tingle and my cheeks heat.

His right hand lifts the pillow now under my head and I start to ask him what the Hell he's doing, but then I don't need to anymore when he pulls his hand back.

Turns out Bryn really _does _sleep with a gun under his pillow. He shifts against me then goes very still eyes darting to mine looking a little nervous.

"And what are you planning to do with that?" I ask.

"Uh…" he flushes suddenly confusing me endlessly once more.

I am starting to worry that he is still partially asleep, as it was not that long ago. "You said there were too many to shoot!" I remind him in an urgent whisper. If the plan has changed, or he is forgotten suddenly this is important for him to know.

"Oh, that…" the flush remains staining his cheeks bright red even in the darkness. What the Hell else would I mean…and then that's not a question anymore either.

_Oh_.

I'm trying to think of something to say, but suddenly all my brain can think of is the fact that Bryn obviously likes _this_ position more, the evidence of which is pressed tightly through a thin cotton sheet against my thigh. I bite my lip and he pointedly doesn't look at me swallowing hard.

Then the guy at the window presses a hand to the glass and Bryn leans into me close enough that the rough shadow over his cheeks and chin prickle against the sensitive skin of my neck. I shiver.

"Upstairs, end of the hall." He whispers right against my neck making my head buzz. "Hatch into the attic, pull the stairs up." He starts to pull back and I grip him with both hands hard enough to bruise.

"Don't you _dare_." I snarl back at him. I do not know exactly what he is going to do. I only know if he were planning to be with me he would not have to explain his escape plan, and that does not sit well with me. "Not leaving you," I whisper quieter squeezing his arms under my fingertips as hard as I can, hard enough that my nails bite into flesh. He winces a little staring down at me. And _good_, I think viciously. The thought of him dying while I hide away in some 'attic' makes my chest hurt, he should feel it too.

The man at the glass is taping his hand over one of the squares in the pane.

Bryn stares at me expression oddly fierce in the wash of white light right before his head dips down and his lips seal over mine. And okay, I tell myself. It beats staring at death through the window, counting my heartbeats wondering how many of them it will take for death to shatter the glass. I draw my arms around his shoulders and press my palms to his back while he shifts against me, over me angling his chin and tracing my lower lip with his tongue and dear god that does something melty and gooey and oh so right in my gut.

I feel myself moan and drag my teeth over my lower lip staring up at him heart in my throat certain I've just given us away. He drops his head again a breathless shush against my ear making my breath shudder in my chest and a hard shiver pebble my nipples further against his skin. Bryn curses softly, the word almost a groan against the shell of my ear; right before his mouth closes over my lobe making my entire body jump in response. He presses down into me, and suddenly his weight is no longer just distracting—it feels incredible a whole section of my brain simply shutting down to focus on the exact feel of hot skin through thin sheets and his hand not occupied with gripping a handgun sliding up to cup my cheek tilting my head so he can—_Wow._

Outside thunder cracks so loud it rattles the windows in their frames, shakes my heart in my chest and Bryn pauses for a brief moment his mouth hovering just over my skin—not touching me but close enough that his exhale floods across my skin in a warm brush.

The man at the window moves away, drawn by the sound we both lie perfectly still barely breathing as his steps shuffle across the porch and then drop away into another heavy rumble of thunder.

My stomach is skipping under my ribs, my heart pounding an unsteady rhythm in my ears and Bryn's mouth closes over the side of my neck wet and hot and his hand lets go of the gun so his fingers can close around my hip even through the tangled cotton sheet. His mouth glides lower, and I tilt my chin up silently urging him on my arms still wound around his back one hand now pressed lower against his spine dragging him down to press harder against me and something about that touch, the weight against my skin makes my brain go to white noise and my breathing hitch all over again.

"Charlie," Bryn's voice slips over my skin curls inside me fanning flames already licking their way up my skin even higher. It's a firestorm on my senses, engulfing my brain.

One of his hands grips the sheet tangled between us during our roll. He leans away from me, the loss of his heat and weight like a physical blow, I mourn the loss but not for long. He's flicking the sheet away in one quick flick of his arm and a sudden rush of cooler air and then there's hot skin on skin and god that's a thrilling. Just the feel of him pressing into me sends a sweet rush under my skin to the heat building in my abdomen. His mouth is everywhere at once, his hands caress every inch of skin, fingers pressing me closer to him while he's dragging his frame over mine, parting me with one thigh to slip between my legs and I can't breathe, my lungs are on fire and my fingers are in his hair holding him tight.

I gasp and tremble, shudder beneath him at the twisting silver strands of pleasure winding their way down every limb, sweet and hot and bone-meltingly exquisite. His heavy and thick erection sliding against my leg before he crawls higher up my body; until he's throbbing and pulsing against my waiting heat, just outside of where I want him to be. Leaning over me until he drops to his elbows flush against me, his arms wrapped around my back, trapping me beneath him which is silly almost, there is no-where else I want to go. Not now, maybe not ever if being with him like this will always feel so good.

My head is rushing with too much sound and sensation and the spiraling heat swirling through my chest, tightening further with each ragged breath…with the look he sends me right before dipping his head to re-capture my lips.

He slides over me, skin on skin tongue sliding over mine. I wind my ankle around one thigh feeling him press in just the right place while my insides clench in another mind-staggering tingling rush and Bryn tears his lips from mine breathing half a curse, his whole frame shuddering. One of his hands is skating down my side from rib to hip, than he's gripping me, tilting me up to the glorious mind-numbing pressure of his body firmly pressed against mine. And just that feels so immensely right, I feel like I'm going to squirm out of my own skin waiting for him to move, the anticipation burns like a wildfire through my core. It's overwhelming, too much, not enough… to need something so urgently that I never knew existed before now.

He pauses there, barely inside me; waiting for what I don't know. His breath hot and wild, blooms of wicked heat caressing my neck, breaking skin already pebbled in gooseflesh out in full body shivers. When he moves it's just the tiniest of thrusts against my entrance, only just penetrating slick folds, reminding me with each press and retreat of the impossible empty ache hounding my senses, gnawing at the last remnants of self-control clinging together under my skin.

His breathing is ragged and too fast, barely controlled gulps of air. Every inch of his body now shaking with bone-deep tremors where his skin is flush with mine. His fingertips suddenly pressed to my temple, dragging down to follow the line of my jaw while he stares at me in some kind of awe. I gasp and arch and flutter and my breath breaks on a half uttered sob. Every inch of me spirals down, centers on one fluttering wet and slick channel of raw nerves pulsing with heat and need to every rapid heartbeat while somewhere high over our heads the storm that brought me down here rages on pelting the roof and world outside with a symphony of rain and the sharp whistle of wind.

It's enough to drive anyone mad. These sensations crawling under my skin; flashing out through my limbs turning me liquid and matching the warm honey color of his eyes the tickling hum of need pushing down my spine and curling my toes. And I'm losing my mind, this aching need…this hunger it's too much and needs to be fulfilled.

"Bryn please," I gasp the words against his neck feel and hear his answering groan only half understand what I'm begging for, what I need myself but that's okay because _he_ does. Bryn's hips press forward; his heavy length sliding past slick folds burning and aching past muscles seizing against this all new sensation, this impossibly heavy sensation of fullness while I fight for the control not to move. Pleasure sears through me, tumbles through my belly bursts with white pops like static, an electric fusion up my spine.

Then without warning, scarcely an inch past my entrance he hits a tight spot…_really_ _tight._ He presses there momentarily fixed; a flash of something like astonishment flitting over his face and then the pressure becomes a piercing _pop_.

I gasp, flinch under him when something breaks free in a rapid burst of white hot pain that steals my breath at the same instant he slides rapidly home. The pain throbs and clamps around his presence in my belly, burning so intense it makes my eyes suddenly tear up and my skin break out in a cold damp sweat.

And it must hurt him too whatever it is because he curses like he's been shot and jerks away from me completely. He's leaping up leaving me stunned and hurting still flat on my back on the bed too stunned to move.

Apparently books lie too.

"The _Fuck_ Charlie?!" Bryn is staring at me more wide eyed then I've ever seen him. His back pressed against the wall like I'm threatening him in some way I have yet to figure out because all I can think about is this aching pain.

_Like I have any idea?!_ I feel like rolling onto my side, curling my spine around this tender ache in my belly. So I do just that, twisting onto my side and curling tight. An exhaled and dumbfounded "Ow," is the only answer I manage to give him.

But it tells him something; or my posture does and just like that his expression slides from panicked to shock and somehow settles on royally pissed.

He leaps back onto the bed kneeling beside me and rolling me flat with quick almost brutal movements. I lay still once more on my back, though this time my legs are drawn up because it eases the ache noticeably so. I swallow staring up at him pinning me his hands on my arms in a bruising vise grip which is wholly unnecessary because I don't really want to move right now, and the glare he's fixed on me is so intense I'd have to shatter the very laws of nature to defy it.

Suddenly it's all I can do not to start crying.

"You're _bleeding_ Charlie, _why_ are you _bleeding_?" His tone is accusatory and sharpens the pain in my chest to the point my abdomen no longer hurts. Well, almost.

_Why is he still asking me?_ I feel like my disconnected brain is grasping at empty air, struggling for answers that refuse to come. "Is that not normal?" I breathe out desperate to know what I did wrong. There was nothing about pain in my book. I wonder for a fleeting moment if any of it was true.

Perhaps my whole world is a lie, and that is why none of it makes any sense.

Bryn utters a string of words that I didn't even know could go together in a single sentence. "Have you done this before?"

"No." I whisper it, because I've never heard him sound so desperate…and I know even before his reaction that it is not the answer he wants…

"Goddamnit! Charlie!" His eyes are wildly furious. His hands tighten on my shoulders to a bruise inducing grip. I wince but it doesn't loosen.

"Is that bad?" I stare up at him, unable to do anything else.

"Yes," Bryn hisses eyes narrowing down at me. And he shakes me hard enough my head snaps back and then he leans over me aggressive and radiating immeasurable rage. "Because it means you've been lying to me this whole goddamn time!"

_Oh._ Tears finally slip out dampening the pillow under me.

"So how about the fucking truth for once! Tell me who you _Really_ are!"

He wants the truth? I heave in a broken breath, choke as it catches half-way down my throat seizing painfully part-way out of my lungs. "_I don't_ _know_." I croak twisting my head to the side and clamping my eyes tight over unshed tears.

"And how is that? Head-injury, run-away, some desperate rich-girl ploy to re-capture the attention of Mommy and Daddy?"

"No." I shake my head violently. I do know who I am but I am certain I am not one of those things…at least I am mostly certain.

"What did they promise you to someone you didn't love? All Romeo and Juliet, so you ran away?" and on this at least his hands soften for a moment. My mind flashes to Libby and I wonder for a brief painful moment if it's because he can relate. "How old are you, whoever you are?" His face changes, softening just a bit. "What are you running from Charlie? Are you running from the mandate?"

"I don't know." I breathe out between hiccupping breaths, "_what _mandate_?_" I blurt out when it's clear he wants something more of an answer I don't know how to give.

"_The _Mandate! The god-damn fucking Mandate! The reason Libby is registered at the station house as my wife and has to stay at my place when we go out in case a patrol checks because she's over eighteen and if she doesn't at least _look_ like she's trying to comply they'll take her away, assign her to someone else! The god-damn reason people have more kids then they can feed and half of them end up starving in the streets or in work houses or sold for sex to put food on the table for the ones that are left!"

"I don't understand,"

"No you don't! You really don't!" He hisses. "and _how_ is that possible?" His voice has a razors edge to it. "You're smart Charlie, I've seen it. So how does a girl of what seventeen? Eighteen? With enough background to read manage to not even know where she comes from?" He moves closer to me leaning in and it feels very different than it did moments before but it doesn't change the spiral of heat clenching through my insides that his closeness always brings. "No name, no family, no history just _Wham!_ Out of nowhere; I'm not stupid enough to believe you fell from the sky."

I remember Libby's pick-up line days earlier and my throat tightens. "More like a hole in the ground." I hear myself say.

He makes a sound I can't classify and glares at me, "Would it kill you to make sense for once!"

"I'm _trying_!" I snarl back and he looks a little surprised. He moves away from me, sliding all the way off the bed to grab his jeans, shoving his legs into them and jerking up then he leans his back against the wall, arms crossed tight over his still bare chest glaring at me expectantly. "I crawled out of a hole in the ground," I tell him.

It takes him a moment. "You mean that _literally_ don't you?"

I just stare at him.

"Okay fine, you crawled out of a hole." He says. "What was in the hole?"

"A lot of things." I tell him. More specifically a long metal pipe I shimmed up to escape. It stretched so far to the sky my thighs ached long before I reached the top, shaking so bad I wasn't certain they wouldn't give out and send me plummeting to my death—or at the very least severe injury putting a very premature end to my escape.

"Explain," he says staring at me mouth pulled into a fierce scowl.

I turn away and I try. "I have been trying to leave that place for as long as I can remember. They did…research," I tell him remembering that word. Though I avoid telling him what kind. "They experimented with…things…" I wrap my arms around my knees the phantom memories of pain washing over me.

"They hurt you," Bryn says his voice strained still staring at me jaw tight, his eyes very dark in the low light.

I nod swiping at the hot tears threatening to spill from my eyes again. "Yes, that was true. I did not wish to lie to you, but I cannot go back there." I stare at him willing him to understand things he cannot know; wires and chairs and tanks and needles and wounds I never remembered getting only healing…

His jaw clenches and he straightens up. "You _won't_." There's such conviction in his voice even I believe it. He turns to leave.

"Why do I still feel like I have done something terribly wrong?" I mumble to his back my heart seizing up in my chest.

"I didn't mean for this to happen… things got…out of hand. I'm sorry." His voice is tight. "It was bad enough touching you when I thought so many other people had done it…that you at least knew _what _we were doing… that you wanted me too…" He snarls shaking his head. "I could forgive myself for that maybe…but this…I didn't…" he stops looking for all the world like he hates himself.

I'm struggling to understand, a heavy lead weight only growing heavier and more painful in the pit of my stomach. "So you wouldn't touch me before because you thought other people had done it—" My stomach is in freefall. "…and now you won't do it because you're the only one?"

He flinches like I have hit him, turning his face away. It makes no kind of sense and I feel like total shit in ways I can't even explain.

"I'm sorry," He pulls the door shut behind him. Outside the rain stops, the thunder rumbles but it sounds very far away. The world outside is slowly turning a lighter gray. I lie back staring at the ceiling suddenly empty and very numb.

And then unbelievably **_angry_****.**

Furious, seething rage like I've never known in my life bubbles up coating my insides and the back of my throat like hot tar. The edges of my vision start to go a little red. I blink but it doesn't change, and the burning rage clawing through my belly only intensifies, swells up blotting out all reason.

I jerk up from the bed slamming both fists against the mattress with a snarl while my vision tunnels, narrows and washes the world completely red…

and then everything goes black.


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes: **_Very important please note the POV change for this chapter! :)_

_Thanks to all the readers and reviewers out there! _

_Typos fixed 7/11 :)_

* * *

**Chapter Twelve**

_(Bryn's POV) _

* * *

_He's such an asshole. Fuck. _

The second the door clicks shut between them Bryn presses his back to the wall. Torn violently between getting into his truck and just driving off, to going back in to do he's not even sure what—comfort her? Like he even could, _Fuck_. Girl's either a complete basket case—which he doesn't believe—not completely at least, or she's been holed up in some government research facility where they've been doing god only knows what.

She's been hurt and used, that much he can easily believe—there's no way to fake the memory of pain and anguish like he sees in her eyes, the way her hands noticeably shake when she thinks about going back...

And he just took her virginity like a total asshole. How could he screw something up so badly?

She wasn't someone's run-away slut; she hadn't bolted from some ham-handed husband or lover. If he can believe her words now, she escaped from a fucking hole in the ground. He can think of a lot of places in this world that fit that description, figuratively and a few even literally. Course now that he thinks about it she never specifically admitted to exactly where she was from before, just let him answer the question himself.

_Just what the fuck has he gotten himself into? _

He curses, pushing away from the wall grateful he thought to put on his pants at least before leaving the room. He needs space, he needs to think, he needs to get his God-Damn Geeked-Out head on straight. Something about Charlie makes him go completely lame-brained.

Touching her was such a mistake…it was _always_ going to _be_ a mistake; not because he didn't want too. Fuck no, just the opposite. But it _wasn't_ right. Not before when he thought she'd escaped years of abuse and torture as essentially a sex slave, and it wasn't anymore right knowing the truth now. Knowing she'd escaped from some, some…he doesn't even know what to call it.

_The Hell was he thinking back there on that highway? _

Bloodied up girl standing in the middle of the road, no name, no weapons; not even a knife, and he takes her home like some lost puppy dog without a tag. How stupid is it that he's surprised to find she's completely capable of biting off his hand? It's his own damn fault for touching her with it in the first place, and _there's the healthy dose of self-loathing again_, he scowls.

He'd put her in the truck that night mistaking her to be about twelve in those sagging pale blue pajamas. It wasn't until he got her home and walked in on her stark naked he'd realized the boxy fit of those clothes had hidden _a lot_. Twelve Charlie was not. Short yes, twelve no. Bryn doubted she was as old as he was, but she certainly wasn't a child that's for damn sure.

He'd told himself over and over again not to notice her that way, a task that quickly became impossible. But her past was constantly on his mind, anytime he felt himself slipping he'd remind himself all the shit she'd probably been through; how many men had used her against her will and he couldn't…wouldn't be one in just another long line of assholes incapable of keeping his hands to himself because she was a beautiful girl.

He left himself with no other choice but to go quietly insane nearly every day. Charlie didn't have to _try_ to be alluring. Charlie didn't have to flirt or bat her eyes. Charlie was simply Charlie, and even talking in circles and tripping over every other word in one of Libby's crack-pot sentences she was simply _devastating_.

It didn't matter how many times a day he reminded himself that his feelings were wrong, that the tightening in his groin when she looked at him made him a total dickhead and an asshole…it happened anyway. He could almost ignore it, avert his eyes and try not to notice the perfect freckles on her delicate skin, and those impossibly long lashes so long that on occasion when she was near him, like the time she'd cried in his arms had tickled his skin. She made his heart race and his chest hurt and his mouth dry while he fought his stupid brain not to stumble over his own words because wouldn't that just make them a pair?

And then she'd almost gotten eaten by that god damn dead guy in the fucking yard while he was only a few hundred feet away and finding her whole and alive was such a relief he'd done the stupidest fucking thing in his god-damn life. She was safe and somehow he'd missed her even though it'd only been a freaking day, and suddenly there she was, practically in his arms staring up at him with those wide eyes he couldn't decide whether to classify as green or blue so instead of puzzling that in his head some more he'd kissed her.

But she'd kissed him back. And wasn't that just the final nail in the coffin of his sanity? Wanting her might have been torture, but realizing she might want him back only made it worse.

He'd tried to write it off as adrenaline and nerves, the relief at finding her alive and nothing more; but then she'd blown that away by telling him how he made her nervous. At first he'd thought it was because of her past and that she thought he was going to use her…that way. He cringes realizing the truth of his situation now hits a little too close to that very nightmare scenario.

And then the barn. _Fuck me_, he all but grinds his teeth with the fierce set of his jaw. It was the yard all over again, only this time she reached for him first and he'd temporarily lost his mind and touched her right back because God damn he was nothing if not a glutton for punishment. If Ethan hadn't come around the corner and snapped him out of it he might have tried peeling her out of those tight jeans right there on the dirt floor.

And it's official, he realizes. He really is a shameless asshole. He should send her away, someplace safe from his wandering eyes and inability to keep his damned hands to himself…after what just happened. Whole world be damned it wasn't like anyone else could do much more damage. He should have sent her home with Libby the very first day…or the second. He definitely should have sent her back with Libby after the disaster in the barn when she wouldn't even come out of her room to talk to him for over a day.

Then she crawls into his bed.

So much of her mannerisms fit into the story he believed that when some things didn't exactly flow, when her words failed to mesh with what she should or shouldn't know he'd let it go. Choose to write it off as odd and that was that, he didn't ask specifically where she'd come from. He didn't ask many questions at all; because part of him honestly didn't want to know. Couldn't handle hearing her say those kinds of words, not just because it was morally repulsive and vile to think of one human doing such terrible things to another—but because it was _Her_.

Charlie, sweet, beautiful, tangle-up her words Charlie.

Knowing would only fill him up with even more rage then already seethed through his insides burning and rolling in his gut anytime he thought of her being used so brutally and thoughtlessly by anyone, especially the name-less face-less men his brain tortured him with. Images that made him want to fill up one of the giant white drums with gas they didn't have to waste and drive to the closest playhouse dousing the sagging boarded up structure from end to end until it soaked into every weathered and warped board of that nightmare place and throwing in a match watching with vehement satisfaction as it burnt to the ground. And then he wouldn't be able to stop himself from driving to the next one, and the next.

Burn them all to the fucking ground; just like Libby was always saying.

If only the world worked that way. In real life the managers would simply run, leaving the girls strung out and half naked in the dirt; if they bothered to get them out of the house at all. Trying to pull them out himself would probably just result in a few lead rounds to the head.

Deader than Dead, that's what he'd be for his troubles, and what good was that to Charlie? None, he told himself.

They'd simply start up another one. Even at the end of the world scum survived. Bryn scowls moving through the front room and out onto the porch, the sun is almost up, the sky lifting to a pale sick looking grey through the heavy cloud cover. The grass around the house partially trampled by their overnight traffic and curling with thick tendrils of mist. At least it's finally cooler.

He leaps off the porch skirting the two walking dead guys in the yard moving swiftly toward the barn with them lagging after him. The thunder's died down, and the lightening is long gone like the pounding rain he'd woken up to beating on the roof with Charlie by his side all soft pale skin like satin and wide frightened eyes and…_no_.

He closes his fist around the handle of a shovel wrenching it up out of the bucket beside the open barn door with strictly more force than really necessary. Then he rounds on the guy making his way through the doorway behind him lifting the blunt instrument in his hands. He's got some serious frustrations to work out.

Both of them downed in moments he tosses the shovel to the dirt stalking toward the back of the barn to retrieve a fuel can so he can burn them off. He's in the back filling one of the faded red canisters when he hears the muffled sounds of a truck pulling up. Probably Ethan coming to drop Libby off so they can take their delivery to the other side of the district. Outside Libby is yelling something, now Ethan is too. He straightens up moving toward the barn doorway listening intently for the tell-tale crack of gunfire or snarling. Certain that the rest of the Geeks had moved on chasing the storm long before he left the house.

Libby reaches the open barn door just moments before he does her eyes wide, her words flooding the pit of his stomach with dread.

"Bryn! Charlie just ran into the woods naked!"

"She what?!" _He's going to kill that girl. He leaves her alone for a second…_

Libby's staring at him still. Her eyes narrow suddenly and her cheeks flush a little pink. "What _did_ you _do_?" She snarls sounding a little scary for someone half his size.

"Nothing!" He snaps feeling his cheeks flush bright red defying his defense. "Which way did she go?" She's glaring at him still hands clenched into fists at her sides like she might hit him. "Libby! I killed two Geeks this morning just in the yard, where did Charlie go?!"

She's been so preoccupied glaring at him she almost trips over the first dead corpse before she notices it, her eyes go wide again. "Oh my….This way." She turns and bolts, and he forgets sometimes being almost a foot shorter then him that Libby can _really_ run.

They take off towards the woods, Ethan right behind them shouting a quick, "What the hell is going on?" while they run. He doesn't answer, no time to explain, and they'll never find her if Libby's punching him in the face. He'll let her have at it later, it's no less then he deserves.

She _would_ run right into the woods, he thinks, no clothes, no weapons…damn girl is going to get herself eaten.

"Charlie!" Libby's frantic voice wafts back to him through the trees as they run, the direction she took all too obvious with the deep furrows and heavy prints in the muddy churned up earth.

How far could she have really gotten? And then he knows when Libby slams to a stop just in front of him. He has to dart to the side to avoid running right over-top of her. Then he stops too.

"_Charlie_?" Libby's voice shakes.

And no. Just no. His eyes are seeing it, but his brain is telling him he's wrong. It can't be. Everything about the picture before him is too violent, too horrific…too bloody and gory, un-earthly still and just _wrong_ to be Charlie…

She's just staring at him.

Only staring isn't the right word. Glaring falls frighteningly short as well. Her eyes are cold and flat, her lips pull back from her teeth in an expression he can only call a snarl. The noise that follows is something the human throat was never meant to make.

Whatever that thing is hunched over the eviscerated corpse of a Geek, hands still buried in its ruined throat coated to the elbow in slick gore…it's _not_ his Charlie.

He's never been so certain of anything in his life as he snatches Libby's arm in a vice grip shoving her roughly behind him watching her stand with a surreal liquid slowness. She moves on the balls of her feet. Each step powerful and assured like the silent glide of a jungle cat; all of Charlie's characteristic grace with an edge of promised violence.

Beside him Ethan has his gun out, but he hasn't raised it, maybe he can't, his mind no doubt struggling with what their all seeing. Trying to equate the idea of delicate gentle Charlie with the blood coated creature now standing before them. He has no idea whether the thing before them is alive or dead, but how can that be? People don't turn that fast, and corpses that rise to terrorize the living don't glide; they certainly didn't pin people with all-out hostile withering glares sharp enough to chill blood.

"Charlie…" he's got his hands up he realizes, palms out, but he doesn't remember raising them. Just like he doesn't remember taking that first staggering step backwards, or the second until Ethan takes one hand off his gun to jerk Libby to the side, putting her behind his back instead. It looks like this is a fight Ethan's decided he wants nothing to do with.

Bryn backs away another two steps, Charlie still advancing on him.

And looking like she just might eat him alive.

His eyes leave her face, dart to her fingers curled into vicious looking claws, flexing and tensing her fingertips dripping dead black blood onto the dirt. How is that possible, only Geeks rip into people with their bare hands… He feels dizzy, and suddenly ill. "Charlie…what?"

She growls flashing her teeth at him again. "I'm _not_ Charlie." She hisses.

Then she launches herself at him in the blink of an eye, faster then he'd have thought possible. And if Ethan were going to shoot her he should have done it before now, Bryn realizes. Because it's too late now to separate one from the other with them both tangled up and fighting for control on the muddy ground. He's desperately trying to get a grip on her slippery gore slicked skin, his fingers not helped by the mud rapidly added to the mix. She's hissing and spitting and landing more painful blows then he'd have given her diminutive frame credit for.

"Fuck, Charlie! I get it you're pissed off but that hurts!" He has to turn his head to the side and spit blood from busted lip out of his mouth but he considers himself pretty lucky so far, he's alive. The same certainly can't be said for the other guy on the ground.

"Good!" She snarls. Then she hits him again. And okay then. He cringes a little but this time he hits her back. They grapple in the dirt, occasionally landing painful blows that have him grunting and hissing and her snarling at him eyes flashing viciously promising more violence. Twice he almost gets the upper hand, but she's too god damn slippery and wiggly to get a good grip...

"Stop it! Both of you!" Libby somewhere off to their right sounds close to tears.

She hesitates for a just a moment but it's sufficient to get her pinned. Right before she gets her legs up against his chest in a move he vaguely recognizes for a brief flash but not before she launches him off of her and through the air about ten feet. He lands on his ass, more than mildly winded, lurching almost drunkenly to take his feet with his head sorta ringing from the last blow. Half wondering why she hasn't killed him yet, and where the Hell Ethan is? Some best-friend letting him wrestle his naked bloody sorta-girlfriend-kinda-loony-roommate all by himself. Who it turns out is somehow completely feral, crazy strong and also clearly kicking his ass.

She's already moving towards him again expression deadly clearly intent on finishing this, to what level of severity he's not entirely sure. "Charlie…" He warns gasping for breath the forest tilting a bit cock-eyed on its side.

Snarls reach his ears then mixed into a heavy guttural moan off to his left and then too many things happen at once for his tunneling vision to un-ravel.

Libby screams. Ethan curses and shouts. A shot goes off. Then another. He turns in time to see some half-rotted dead guy that must have stumbled out through the trees drawn by the commotion. He's got his skeleton like hands locked around Libby's arms while she struggles pushing him back frantically fighting to keep snapping teeth off her throat.

"Libby!" But it's not Ethan or him screaming her name.

Charlie's changed direction in the blink of an eye, like a cat one minute she's advancing on him like she's going to rip him to shreds and then she's just gone. She veers to the side shifting on a single planted foot. Judging by the howl of outrage, she's clearly intent now on hunting something else. She races straight towards the new struggle. Ethan is desperately trying to pick off the few Deadies stumbling towards them through the trees, but he's only got a few bullets left and he'll never get the Geek off Libby in time. Then in the next instant he doesn't have to.

Charlie slams into the corpse ducking under Libby's arm driving it down to the ground with her shoulders and head, an animalistic snarl that sets his teeth on edge, has all the hairs on the back of his neck prickling like pins rents the air. She's reaching forward and up as she drives him to the ground sinking those claw-like hands into the skin of his skull even as he tries to sit up; to sink his teeth into her…right before she rips his head clean off.

She simply drops it snarling and leaping onto the next dead corpse ambling towards them driving it to the ground. All of them frozen in horrified fascination as she's snatching its waving arms in her own, planting her feet in its chest and simply rips those off to, right below the elbow. Then she swerves and dives and ends up right under the throat of another which she impales through the chin with the snapped jagged forearm bone of her previous victim. Then she's twisting and growling and proceeds to beat the armless guy back to dead with his own severed arm.

Nobody says a thing. He's not even sure he's capable of speech. It's a nightmare, it isn't real and yet somehow it is…

It's over in minutes leaving her crouched forward panting heavily, nearly every inch of her skin coated or flecked in some kind of mud or black sick. Her eyes dart to his still standing frozen not twenty feet from the closest limb. He flinches back from her but her eyes slide off him again just as quick, the furious heat in her glare strangely gone leaving her normally expressive green eyes oddly flat and extraordinarily sad.

She licks her lips eyes landing on Libby, the only one who doesn't flinch under her gaze still sitting where Charlie's attack on the first Geek knocked her to the ground. "Are you alright?" she wheezes.

Libby nods weakly then lurches forward in the next split second one hand thrown out but still falling several feet shy of touching her as Charlie crumples boneless to the ground.

Libby crawls forward towards her silent form voice wavering and small. "_Charlie…?" _

Ethan dives forward snatching her around the waist and dragging her backwards to stand closer to where his feet are still firmly planted to the ground of upturned dirt and gore. He still can't seem to move, he keeps tell his feet to do something, _anything_, and they completely refuse. But he hasn't fallen backwards on to his ass, so that's something.

"The _fuck _was _that_?!" Ethan starts demanding.

Libby raises her hand to Ethan's face curling her index finger as she speaks in a gravely demonic voice. "Charlie's not here right now." Ethan pulls her hand down, his normally calm expression looking more than a little freaked and a touch pale.

"So, not helpful Libs."

"Just trying to lighten the mood." She tells Ethan eyes comically wide but her cheeks are ghostly pale and her hands shake as she clasps them before turning back to stare at him again. "What the Hell did you do to her?" She demands once again. Like before in the barn, only now he's even less sure what the Hell to say.

_Did he do this?_ When he left her in his bedroom she'd looked upset…but _this_? Is this why they had her locked up? Just who the fuck did he bring home that night?

"I didn't sleep with her." He finds himself mumbling, at a loss for what else could cause such a change. She went from crawling into his bed and kissing him, moaning his name to trying to claw off his face…

Libby rounds on him completely shoving out of Ethan's grasp completely ignoring the girl that just ripped six bodies limb from limb lying not twenty feet from them her expression outraged. "Hold up, you did _What_?!"

"Drop it Libs, please." They have bigger problems obviously. Like what the Hell is he supposed to do now?

"Do we…do we leave her here?" Ethan is apparently reaching the same conclusion. Whatever Charlie is it's obviously dangerous. He's suddenly starting to wonder about all those reports of shredded corpses and whether there ever were any wild dogs to begin with…his brain stumbling repeatedly over the violent visual of sweet wide-eyed Charlie venturing out in the middle of the night to rip and shred dead guys in her sleep…

"The Hell do you mean leave her here?!" Libby snarls at them backing towards Charlie, moving faster when Ethan moves to snatch her back.

"Libby, don't—"

"Don't what? _Help_ _my friend_? Charlie's never done anything to hurt me, or you! And as far as I can tell the only reason she wanted to bust Bryn's face in is because he apparently turned into a total dickhead overnight!" She dives around him avoiding Ethan's arm again just to smack his arm hard enough to sting. Like he hasn't been hit enough. "The Hell were you thinking!" She shouts. "Charlie's sweet and innocent and all head-over-heels for you and you have sex with her!?"

"I didn't, look it's not…Can we fucking talk about something else right now?!" He snarls back certain that even Ethan is giving him a less then friendly look over this.

She glares at him crossing her arms. "We're not leaving her here. She's Charlie, and she just saved my life."

"Libs…"

"No! She just saved my life! I was about to be corpse chow and you know it!"

"And what if she wakes up and tries to rip off Bryn's face, or mine or yours?" Ethan's tone is low like he's afraid their shouting might do just that.

"She's _Charlie_," Libby pleads rounding on him again ignoring Ethan's frustrated sound. "Bryn, please…its _Charlie_…_please_, if she meant to hurt me, or you or Ethan she'd clearly have done it by now…she just, she got upset and who could blame her with where she came from and what you did." She narrows her eyes again.

"I didn't sleep with Charlie." He drags a hand over his face feeling immensely tired with the adrenaline let down causing his hands to shake.

"You're damn right you didn't! She's not ready for that kind of heavy shit yet!" Libby tells him smacking his arm again. She has the uncanny ability to always hit the same spot. His fingers are starting to go numb.

"Charlie's not from a Playhouse." Libby just stares at him. "She told me this morning after…" he winces and looks away from her expression reminding himself he's not out of the woods yet. After Libs drags the whole story from him chances are she'll murder him so Charlie doesn't have to. "She's from some kind of research facility. Some military test site."

"Great," Ethan mutters, "Well I feel so much safer bringing her home after hearing that…"

"So they screwed up Charlie's head." Libby says turning back to stare at Charlie's bloodied form lying in the dirt. "God. Poor Charlie. What the hell did they do to her? We have to keep her safe."

"Safe?! She just slaughtered six walking corpses with her bare hands Libs! I think Charlie's capable of defending herself!"

"Not against the people that did this to her!" Libby turns to her brother who quickly shuts up taking in her expression, though he doesn't look happy about it. Libby turns on him again, expression pleading. "You _know_ I'm right. We have to do something. We have to keep her hidden. She was fine before this, and she can be fine again…Bryn _please_…"

"We'll get her back to the house, and we'll figure something out."

Ethan grumbles something about them all having lost their damn minds, and he isn't sure he disagrees with him. But he moves towards her slowly glad that at least his head is feeling semi-okay now that she's no longer punching it. He hesitates only a moment before he bends over to pick her up again. She's limp and her bare skin feels clammy in his arms, her only movement the occasional shallow intake of breath.

"So…" Libby starts as they all move back towards the house leaving the corpses where they lie. "Any idea if Charlie will be _Charlie_ when she wakes up?"

"No idea, let's just hurry up and get her back to the house."

Hopefully she'd wake up sane, and soon. He wanted some answers. _Now._


	14. Chapter 13

**Notes: ** Huge thanks to the readers and reviewers! You have no idea how awesome it is to get each of your responses and know you're not only reading the story but enjoying it enough to respond. I get a kick out of all your questions and comments. Just like my other story it will all make sense eventually! The mystery is part of the fun!

_Thanks to JuneBug, MadMaddy, Guest, and Heatherw231for the last reviews! _

I hope you continue to enjoy this story and it's characters! :)

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**Chapter Thirteen**

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The moment I wake I know something is wrong. It's not instinct, or six-sense or anything I've read about or heard mentioned before, nothing like that, it's the _pain_. I lay very still hiding behind tightly closed eyes trying to catalog each new ache wondering intently how I got each one in turn. My mind is a fuzzy blur; I do not even remember falling asleep…

The dull throbbing in my belly is the memory that returns to me first; the answer behind its presence only increasing the sharp pain centered deep in my chest—the painful hitch of each breath. I won't cry, what would be the point? I lied and now they know. Bryn will probably never look at me again.

And then I open my eyes to find Libby not six inches from my nose staring at me with wide worry-filled eyes.

"_Charlie_?" Her voice is uncharacteristically small. It wavers half-way out her throat like maybe her own body thought it better to remain silent half into the noise.

"Libby," I greet her my voice feels thick, and my throat hurts…maybe I have already been crying, that would explain the pounding ache in my head but not the painful throb of my lower lip or my left shoulder; or right leg or hell half my body really. I swallow and that hurts too.

"When did you get here?" I ask her looking past her pale face for the first time to notice that I am in my own room and not Bryn's...Maybe it was all a dream? A terrible horrible dream that never happened…God how I want that to be true. But I know it isn't, the ache under my skin is too real to have imagined it. This is no phantom memory of pain…waking to such terrible pain has happened to me before, it used to happen a lot, nearly every time I woke for what felt like half my life there would always be pain. Different places, different types, if pain is truly weakness leaving one's body as Griss has always said then I must be very weak. And my weakness it seems can never decide what form it prefers to take.

I have always assumed that it was from the tests they were always trying to run; that the effects must linger or intensify or perhaps they were running new tests in my sleep…sometimes I even woke with limbs encased in hard plaster and once or twice I woke restrained to find my skin rent with a jagged puckered line of stitches the skin around them swollen pink or faintly red. Other times I woke with faint white lines like scars I couldn't remember getting let alone healing…

In section six that was just my life. I had long ago stopped questioning it; it never won me any answers anyway. But I have not woken in such pain since I arrived here, and that troubles me. I should not be in this much pain…unless…

I stare at Libby's pale face and deep brown eyes, so dark they're almost black near the rim. "What did you do to me?" I ask, fearing the answer already. My eyes dart around the room looking for Griss or Dr. Patrice or one of the soldiers, but we are alone, just the three of us. Bryn is not here I note, and his absence intensifies the ache over my heart.

"You don't remember?" She leans closer and behind her back someone makes an unhappy noise, Ethan I realize glancing past her, his face tight with concern, heavy lines of worry etched around his eyes and mouth. He pales when my gaze lands on him, a reaction I certainly did not expect.

"Ethan?" I try to sit up and find that I can't, and not just because of the pain. I stare in startled bewilderment at my wrists which I failed to notice until this moment with my previous stillness are bound with some kind of thin black plastic rope.

I stare at Libby again my heart hammering in my chest. "Why am I tied up?" I can feel the panic starting somewhere behind my ribs, my breathing coming faster, my pulse too quick.

"You don't remember?" She repeats, stares at me; something in her expression I can't name.

I shake my head. All I remember is a storm, and the dead wandering the yard…getting onto the porch, climbing into Bryn's bed, and then… I turn my head away from Libby's face. "I understand." I tell her, feeling the lead weight of my future press against my chest, squeezing my next inhale into a painful wheeze.

"You do?" She is still staring at me. I can feel it though I do not turn my head. I wish she would look away, her gaze only makes this harder. I have lied to her too.

"Yes," I tell the ceiling. How could I not? I lied to them. "I did not tell you the truth." I admit. I was not supposed to lie and yet I did it anyway. In section six the punishment for telling lies if I was caught was…severe. I lied to Bryn, and to Ethan and Libby hoping that I could stay here. But now they know the truth, and they are obviously going to take me back. I should have known it from the moment I opened my eyes, before that even if I had been paying attention at all to _anything_ except the awful pain I was in.

For the first time ever Libby smells like _fear_. Ethan too, stronger than her.

When the door to my room—or what was my room, opens up I do not have to turn my face to know who it is. _Bryn._ I wish I could melt into the bed, drop right through the floor and just disappear. I cringe and turn my face farther away. Try to ignore the single hot tear tracking down the side of my downturned cheek where at least they cannot see. If Griss is coming to get me, it will be bad enough when he learns I have lied. I will not greet him with tears to make it worse.

Libby still hasn't moved, kneeling beside the edge of the bed staring at me, what she's waiting for I don't know. Perhaps I am supposed to say I am sorry? My throat closes off just thinking the words.

The wooden boards squeak under someone's weight. I keep my gaze firmly fixed on the wall especially when I recognize the middle portion of Bryn's form from the corner of my eye. He is the last person I think I can handle seeing right now. My eyes burn against my will with the hot prick of tears I fight to keep back. He moves to the side of the bed opposite Libby without a word. If I were to shift my gaze on the wall he would be in my view but I do not, I don't want to…I can't. He sits near me making the mattress dip under his weight. I try to swallow the lump in my throat, repeat over and over to myself to just keep staring at the wall and not look at him.

Something shockingly cold is unexpectedly pressed to my lip. I jerk back from the sensation not expecting it, my eyes flying to his face. Then I cannot look away. I stare at him in utter shock, the cold instantly forgotten.

"What happened to your face?" I gasp in distress.

His lip is split and the lid under his left eye is tinted faintly blue, there's a scratch over his right cheek and a large smear of dirt or something darker trailing down the side of his neck and under the collar of his shirt…

He stares down at me expression carefully neutral. "You don't remember?" Is all he says.

Remember _what_? _Why does everyone keep asking me that?_ I try to sit up again, and only end up hissing and flopping heavily right onto my back. "Does it always hurt this much?" I ask staring up at him, not that it matters I suppose since it will never happen again.

"Getting the shit kicked out of you? Generally yes." Ethan answers tone mildly amused from near the door.

I struggle with his meaning for a brief moment. "We were injured?" I ask. Bryn is still sitting awfully still beside me. He just nods to me. His lips forming a tight line the corners of his eyes creased slightly as he stares at me with some kind of concern or question I can't name so I turn my face away, stare up at the ceiling once more. That must be why I do not remember getting out of Bryn's bed, or coming up here. Or when they tied me up. "So this is not because of the sex?" I ask.

Beside me Libby chokes, sputters a half formed sound without words and then chokes again. I turn my head to stare at her not sure what is going on; her face is very red and her eyes narrow at Bryn while her mouth twitches and moves unable to decide it seems on one sound.

A word tugs at the edge of my mind. "Are you having a stroke?" I ask her genuinely concerned; I've never seen Libby look so…odd.

"Oh, Now you've got jokes?!" Libby says.

It wasn't a joke. I really was concerned but I don't get the chance to tell her because Bryn speaks a second later.

"She's fine Charlie, she's just plotting to murder me before I can get out of this room."

I stare at her but she's still glaring at Bryn on my other side. I raise my bound hands to grip her sleeve redrawing her attention to me. I am trying to understand. "Why would you want to kill Bryn?" I ask and her gaze falls to me her cheeks still spotted with bright splotches of high color.

"Because he's an idiot." She answers. I hesitate certain I am missing something once again. Libby doesn't go around killing people because of the state of their IQ…though she does threaten to end people's lives on a regular basis…and sometimes I think she really means it. The people she usually threatens seem to have done something…depraved I think is the word I heard her liberally use. That and a few others one of which sticks in my head the soldiers have never used it, for that reason I like it a lot.

"So you are going to murder Bryn…for being a…dickhead?"

Libby shows Bryn her teeth but it fails to be a friendly look. "See Bry she wants me to kill you too."

"I do not." I tell her quickly before turning back to look at Bryn, not meeting his eyes. "But I think maybe you should throw out that book," I rush to inform him certain that Griss will be here any moment to collect me. Maybe Dr. Patrice will be with him. I almost miss her at times…I can't be sure. We were not close, in any sense of the word. She was not like Libby; she would never be a friend. But she was an almost constant, which was sort of a comfort. The way Libby apparently would not be anymore.

"Book?" Bryn probes.

"Yes," I tell the ceiling unable to meet his gaze. "I read it, but it's not right. It lied to me. You should throw it out before someone else gets hurt."

"Charlie, you're not making any sense." Libby is leaning over me, her apparent anger at Bryn and desire to kill him temporarily soothed. Which is good, I don't want them to fight, soon I'll be gone and they can go back to the way they were.

"Don't be mad at Bryn," I tell her. "It's not his fault, it's mine. I lied." The last two words seem to stick in my throat. I swallow and close my eyes. "If you would just let me go before Griss gets here, I promise I'll run away and never bother you ever again." I didn't plan to add that last part, but somehow it slips out in a desperate plea.

"Griss?" Libby asks.

"Yes, I'm sorry I lied but it was only because I don't want to go back there…" I stare at her past the tears clinging to my lashes. "You don't know what it's like…" How can I explain so much in so little time? I'm not even sure I know the right words.

"Charlie, do you remember what happened in the woods?" Libby is staring at me very hard suddenly.

I search my mind for some recent memory of even being outside but I haven't been out much in days; not with the heat and the threat of the dog pack. I shake my head and her eyes dart to Bryn seated behind me on the bed. She looks back at me. "You…Charlie, you…_changed_."

"I do not understand."

Behind me Bryn snorts.

"Charlie you killed six Geeks in the woods, do you not remember that?" Libby is staring at me once more, eyes wide.

I shake my head firmly no. "I have never killed an other in my life." It was part of the reason Griss despised me so. It was hard to kill them when you could look inside their heads; peal back the layers of ravenous grey fog to what they were underneath—to _who _they had been once before.

"But you did Charlie," Libby tells me voice certain. "You tore into them with your bare hands…"

"No…" That isn't right, but why would they lie? I am only more confuse, not sure what to believe. I am not supposed to lie; but I have heard Libby talk of doing it often enough before all this…the very nature of their survival depends on their ability to deceive others at least in part. I stare at my bound hands, notice for the first time the nails are stained at the rims, something black like dirt caked under their normally short white edges. If I have not been outside how did my nails get like this? If they are lying too, what can I trust? And if they are telling the truth…then I am something worse than a liar.

_I'm a monster. _Something deep inside me cringes away from the words. _No, it can't be true…_

"I killed people?" My blood runs cold in my veins. It feels like in my chest my heart collapses in on itself, fails to work right. It falters painfully so, aching behind my ribs while tight knots twist in my gut and acid burns the back of my throat.

"Not people sweetie, just Geeks." Libby informs me, like that makes it better… "and one of them was trying to eat me so it's not that bad." I stare up at her in shock, she was almost eaten? How is that an improvement?

"Yeah, except when people usually off them they don't do it with their bare hands." Ethan adds. He is still standing by the door. But his posture has relaxed somewhat; his hand no longer hovering near his belt…next to his gun I belatedly realize.

I turn back to Libby. "Am I dangerous?" I must be. Why else would Ethan be ready to draw a gun? Suddenly the fear on the soldiers is starting to make sense, it wasn't _me_ they were terrified of…it was the other _me_. Someone else has been living under my skin. What else have they done wearing my face? I feel unbelievably betrayed, outraged at my own body for keeping this from me. _What am I? _The question makes me start to shake.

Libby stares at me lifting a hand to brush hair off my face. "Nah, I think you're okay." And remarkably she no longer smells like fear. Her lips twist up on one side and she crosses her arms against the edge of the bed leaning heavily on them still kneeled on the floor. "I do think you need a serious bath though, you're kinda rank."

I stare at her frowning lightly. "I do not understand what a bath has to do with my position in the military institution. I'm not a soldier." I inform her. Of that much I'm certain. Griss made it clear on many occasions. In that respect I would always be an _abysmal failure_—his words.

"Yup, she's Charlie," Ethan says and then he sorta laughs; it sounds like relief. I start to ask, _who else would I be? _ But I'm not sure I want to know the answer, especially if the other me is a killer.

"What are you doing?" I ask Libby instead when she grabs something from her side, her knife I realize. She brings it closer to my hands. "Taking this off," she answers still moving to do so, grabbing my hands and pulling them back to her when I pull them away not certain it's safe. "We should get you cleaned up. Something to eat, we can talk about this after."

"After Griss gets here?"

She blinks at me, something clicks in those dark eyes. "Charlie no one is coming to take you away, you're staying here."

I don't even realize I've hugged her until her arms wind around me too. She feels good against my skin, warm and safe and real. She soothes the ache in my chest. She is not afraid, she smells like clean sharp apples, faintly sweet and the spongy earthy flavored bread she makes…I close my eyes against her shoulder and bask in the safe scent.

"Now I need a bath too." She says.

I jerk back from her startled. "I'm sorry,"

"I'm kidding you weirdo, it's fine." I don't move to hug her again, sitting very still on the bed, not because of the pain this time. Ethan has turned his head away there's a red tint working its way up his neck. "What is it?" Libby asks.

"I just realized I am naked." And really, really filthy, it is not just my hands. I may have ruined this bed.

Libby snorts, she raises one of her brows sorta-grinning. "Does that bother you now?" She asks.

I pause. Glad I cannot see Bryn's face behind me. "No," I tell her, which is partially true. "But I am starting to think I am naked a lot more than anyone else" I add.

"I'd like to talk to Charlie alone."

I swallow, dread bubbling up into panic. It must show on my face because Libby shakes her head adamantly in front of me. "Nope, she's getting cleaned up first."

"Charlie, what book?" Bryn asks from behind my back ignoring Libby's look. I am not sure if that is what he wanted to speak to me about in private but my opinion on it remains the same. I look down at the sheets on my bed, then lean over to check the floor. Libby finds it first partially under the bed.

"This?" She asks holding it up.

"Yes," I tell her. "It's not true." Far from it, the hideous thing should be burned, I still hurt.

"It's fiction." Libby is staring at the title. It did not tell me much about the book either. It certainly had not implied anything about its content. "You don't like fiction?" Libby asks looking confused.

"Let me see that." Bryn's hand is suddenly in my field of vision. Libby hands him the book while I keep my eyes on the bed spread.

He takes a moment to inspect the cover, reading the title before flipping it open and scattering the pages with one hand, flipping through them as they slide quickly in front of his eyes escaping the edge of his thumb. He stops, flipping back a page or two. He is silent for a few moments before his lips turn down and he exhales in a rush.

"Cripes." He shuts it again lifts his chin to stare at the ceiling before dropping it again and dragging a hand over his face. He winces with the action as I watch him like he forgot he was in pain.

"Charlie go get cleaned up, we'll talk about this later." He tosses the book back down on the bed swiftly forcefully enough to make it bounce and tumble almost to the edge again. He stands up but then he hesitates, apparently warring with himself internally over something for a moment before turning back to me. I am not looking directly at him so I flinch a little when he leans close to me to whisper right against my ear like he did while we were in bed. His warm breath against my skin makes me shudder once again. I cross my arms quickly to cover my reaction turning my face away.

"It's not a lie Charlie. I fucked up. I'm sorry." It feels like his lips brush my skin but then he's gone again, clearing his throat and moving around the bottom of the bed to follow Ethan who fled right after I realized I was naked again.

"You okay?" Libby asks me.

"I do not know," I answer honestly. "I have never felt this way."

For some reason my lack of experience makes Libby grin. But I guess that is not all that strange, I seem to amuse her quite often with the gaps in my knowledge.

"Come on, you really do need a bath." Libby waits till I stand up and quickly strips the sheets while I wait. She tosses them down in a pile near the door claiming she'll grab them later, show me how to wash them. I'd like that very much. In section six my sheets were changed by someone else always while I was gone so I almost did not notice, but it happened consistently over a long time.

It's nice to think I will be here long enough to need to know how to wash my own sheets.

Libby goes with me to the bathroom. I'm not bothered by this, her presence like always is a comfort to have around.

"Here give me this. You've got dirt all caked in it." Libby is reaching for my neck, I hold still while she undoes the clasp around my throat turning towards the sink. "Shower," she says. "I got this."

I climb into the tub my right leg painful and not wanting to lift over the high rim. The hot water feels good mostly; except for a few places where it stings sharply touching my skin. I use the bar of fresh sharp soap to lather my hands, run the lather over the rest of my skin with my palms and fingers. I have to repeat the process several times until the blood is gone, and the dirt no longer darkens the water in the base of the tub sliding away down the drain. Libby is still working at the sink when I shut the water off and step out.

"You had it all ground into the chain," she says. I try not to think about what exactly was in there though it hardly seems to bother Libby at all. I find that incredibly comforting somehow too. At least Libby does not see me as a monster. It is also at the same time troubling because if I _am_ a monster, she should probably stay away. It is odd to feel conflicted about so many things.

"I don't want to hurt you." I blurt out and she blinks up at me.

"Then you won't" she answers looking so certain. I do not think the world is as black and white as that, but I want so desperately to believe it myself so I only nod. I wrap myself in a towel and Libby waves me over closer to her. "Here let's get this back on you," she says.

The tiny charm and hair fine chain is cold against my heated skin, it must have been cold water she used to clean it, the cold chill seeping into the metal. I raise one hand leaning closer to the mirror for the first time trying to determine what it is since Bryn put it on me days ago.

"Do you know what it is?" Libby asks me mirroring my thoughts watching me pinch my fingers over the tiny silver lump I'd almost forgotten about. Its weight is so light I barely noticed it on my skin.

"No." I tell her.

"It's a guardian angel." She says pressing her hand to my shoulder. "Bryn said if anyone ever deserved someone to watch over them; it was you."

I don't know what to say to that so I simply nod. I hope there is someone watching over them too, especially now that I know more about _me_.


	15. Chapter 14

**Notes:** There's a hint, or tie-in in this chapter for OU if anyone catches it, it's super small and easily missed! *wicked grin*

Muse cookies and super duper cyber brownies to anyone that catches it! Point it out in the review if you think you know what it is! xD

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

* * *

Libby stays with me while I get dressed. Then she asks me if I'm ready, I don't have to ask for what I've already been turning over all the things Bryn might say endlessly in my head. I don't know which is worse, imagining what he might say; or knowing it for certain because it is already done with.

"I'm ready." I decide, I have never liked waiting all that much.

Libby nods and we head downstairs. Bryn and Ethan are in the kitchen so we all sit at the table by silent agreement. I resist the urge to fidget in my chair knowing what Griss would say. I clasp my hands together on the tabletop and wait for someone else to speak—I don't know what to say.

"So…this is awkward," Ethan announces a few tense moments later.

"You don't remember anything at all, nothing about what happened this morning?" I shake my head gently no. The more I consider it I'm glad I do not. I stare down at my hands.

"I think…I should leave." I finally get out. Libby immediately rejects the idea shaking her head no and staring at me like I've grown a second head. Which is sorta true, in a way.

"You can't leave! Where would you go?"

"If you want to leave Charlie no one is going to stop you," Bryn talks over her successfully cutting her next words off with a look. He stares at me again. "You're not a prisoner here, but we want you to stay."

"But I'm dangerous,"

"We don't know that!" Libby spouts before falling silent again.

"Libs, Ethan I want to talk to Charlie alone for a minute, can you step outside?"

Ethan gets up immediately grabbing Libby's hand and hauling her out of her chair. She doesn't look happy to go. The clenching knots in my stomach intensify with every step she takes closer to the door. When it shuts Bryn remain silent, crossing his arms over his chest and staring up at the ceiling a moment more. When he drops his face again to me his expression is strained. He won't meet my eyes.

"Charlie…" He stops. "I know some people, in the City, members of this group that opposes the military government, wants to go back to elected leaders like we had before the Turn." I stare at him in confusion, this is not what I expected at all. "I was supposed to go there in the next few days with Ethan, deliver some furniture pick up some supplies. But I think it might be useful to meet with them, they study a lot of the military's projects…they have people who know things."

I blink finally following along. "You think they might know something about me?"

He shrugs meeting my eyes finally, "It's worth a shot, I'd take anything we could get at this moment. Somebodies got to know something about where you came from."

"Bryn," I drop my eyes to my clasped hands in my lap. "What if I'm dangerous?" It's barely a whisper. "I should leave…"

"You're not." His eyes are the same shade as warm honey again.

"How can you say that? Look what I did to your face!" I'm staring at him again, this time I can't look away. One side of his mouth quirks up and his gaze slides away from mine when he speaks.

"It wasn't you, but I deserved it, leaving you like that…I just needed to figure things out."

"Did you?" I ask.

"No, I'm more confused than ever."

And that makes me feel worse. I bury my face in my hands for a moment. "I'm sorry," I tell the space between my hands. I can't meet his eyes. "I didn't mean to hurt you; it didn't hurt before—when you touched me. It felt really good...I thought it was supposed to…"

"You're not talking about my face are you?" He asks voice tight.

I glance at him over half lowered hands, his gaze making my cheeks flush and my eyes dart away again. "I'm sorry for that too, I don't remember doing that."

"It wasn't you," he reminds me. "Charlie, you didn't hurt me before…I stopped because it was hurting you, I didn't mean to hurt you, I don't want to hurt you," he stops looking up again, blowing out a rushed breath. "That's why I didn't want this to happen…I thought you knew…" He stops again looking flustered.

"I understand that you don't want me…like that. I won't do it again."

Bryn's up out of his chair, circling the table. "Stand up,"

I have no reason not to, so I do. He stops standing very close to me I try looking him in the eye but I can't it makes my heart race so I drop my gaze to stare at his chest. He doesn't touch me, just stands there. I feel myself rocking just lightly on my toes. I am not sure what he's trying to demonstrate.

"Do I still make you nervous Charlie?" His tone is tight, I can't look at him only nod. He leans a little closer to me and my palms start to sweat. I close my hands into tight fists at my side trying to keep them from trembling. "Is it because you're afraid if I touch you again it's going to hurt?" I pause for a moment considering that before lifting my chin to stare at him shaking my head no.

"No," I breathe slowly. Lying hurts. I know that now, all to well. I will tell him the truth, even though my voice shakes around it. "_It's because I want you to do it again…"_

Bryn goes very still in front of me. I'm not even sure he's breathing for a moment. Then his hands raise ever so slowly to the sides of my face and my stomach flips and my head starts to buzz as he leans into me.

"Alright seriously; You expect us to stand outside all day?!" Libby's voice shouts from the entry way.

Bryn lets his right hand drop to his side quickly, he's still leaning towards me but now he moves to the side so that his lips reach my ear instead of my mouth like I was certain he was going to do a moment before. His left palm sliding back to brush the side of my neck thumb tracing along the line of my jaw before dropping again. "You make me nervous too." Is all he says before stepping back, but it makes my insides clench and my breath catch.

* * *

We all make plans for Bryn to take me into the City once Libby and Ethan are back inside. It is not as simple as getting into the truck and just driving there I learn.

Bryn's passport only allows him to bring in one other person, Ethan does not have a passport of his own. So Ethan will not be able to go. He doesn't look surprised by this when Bryn tells me we will be alone so it must be something he already knows, apparently it is something everyone knows...or should. Only two people at a time may enter the City gates on a travel Passport.

"Why only two?" I ask, wanting to understand more. If we are going to the City I do not want to make mistakes like I have before.

"Because three people is an army obviously!" Libby informs me confusing me more, but Bryn keeps talking so I don't get a chance to ask her to explain the difference between two or three or four.

Bryn's paperwork will get us both through the gates, but once inside to move freely it helps to look like we belong there. Which means that Libby will have to change my clothes for something she calls 'trendier' and also involves her adding the little purple clips she wears to change the color of my hair. Which in turn makes her clap her hands excitedly and bounce repeatedly in her chair.

"Don't make her stand out," Bryn grumbles glaring at her.

"Like that's even possible!" Libby shoots back while I squirm in my seat feeling strangely uncomfortable.

"I am sitting right here," I mumble certain that I am blushing, but not understanding why.

Both of them look at me. When Bryn turns back to Libby his eyes narrow. "If I have to kill someone while we're there to keep their hands off her, when we get home I'm blaming you." Libby shrugs.

I don't know what to find more interesting about that sentence, the idea that Bryn would kill someone else for touching me, or the realization that he called this home.

Libby is looking at me intently, "What is it?"

"I've never had a home." Section six was not a home, it was a place. "And I think we are supposed to go un-noticed," I add. "If Bryn has to kill someone will that not ruin the plan?" I stare at her.

"Fine! No purple hair." She finally says looking disappointed.

"No purple hair." Bryn repeats drinking his coffee. Then he mumbles, "I'll probably have to kill someone as it is."

For some reason this makes Libby laugh.

* * *

Libby spent almost an hour with me in the barn later that day sorting through clothes and tossing things aside that were in her way. I didn't have much to say throughout the process, no idea exactly what is 'trendy' but Libby apparently knows. I fell asleep shortly after our clothing search, tucked away safe in my own bed with Libby right beside me even in the tiny space. The scent of freshly washed sheets and Libby's sweetness filling my nose. Bryn got us both up early, me to get ready and Libby to help so we could get on the road-the City is hours from his home.

I glance over at Bryn driving the truck, 'trendy' for him is apparently a very different thing. He does not look much different then he usually does, the jeans are a bit tighter, and a darker color, but he is wearing the same boots, and a simple dark black shirt covered by a jacket now thrown into the seat between us.

My shoes are two inches higher than the sneakers I wasn't allowed to wear. But at least Libby was able to locate a shoe that fit both our requirements—hers being 'tall and cute' and mine being something I wouldn't break a leg in. The compromise had been a good two inches shorter then she'd wanted but it was tall over the whole bottom of the shoe, not just the back allowing me to walk without falling off them. They also strapped not just to my foot but continued half-way up my calf ending just below the skin tight black pants Libby put on me. I watched her do the complicated straps several times and I'm still not certain I could get the ribbons to lay flat the way she wanted. I hope I do not have to take them off.

My clothes are simpler then the shoes—which is good, and my hair had been braided back from my face and true to her word Libby did not make any of it purple. I smooth my fingers over the front of my shirt feeling the lace underneath.

"Everything okay?" Bryn is looking at me. I nod and then I stare through the front glass at the long grey patchwork wall stretching out in front of us.

"What is that?" I have not seen this much cement since I left section six.

"It's the Wall of Winchester."

I glance at him, "What?"

"The City, it used to be called Winchester, long time ago. Some of the old signs still have the name, most of the City was built after the Turn so I don't know what it looked like back then but it's all in the walls, it was originally the second defense if the Valley was over-run by the dead. "

"is there not a wall around the Valley too?"

"There is but it's not complete, not anymore and a lot of it was constructed using something called shipping containers, they were these huge steel boxes used to move things back in the day—they stack well, and ended up being placed pretty much end to end at the other end of the valley, a lot of the mountains don't have any kind of fence. We depend on the elevation to keep Geeks out."

I find myself nodding as he talks staring out the glass as the wall grows closer, towers higher.

"The whole City is built on a grid system. We have to get past the checkpoint at the gate but I know the man there so it should be fine. Once we're inside don't leave my side; ever." He glances at me expression tight.

"Is it not safe?"

"No, it is not safe." He stares at me for a moment more. "If anyone besides me touches you, anywhere you tell me, immediately."

I nod. "Okay."

The wall is nearly three times as tall as the roof of Bryn's house and constructed of patch worked bits of concrete and metal. Sitting over the road are two heavy doors at least twenty feet tall. There are no other vehicles on the road as we pull up the gate, but instead of pulling through we turn down another paved road moving left.

We follow it for a few minutes bouncing over various potholes until we reach a smaller gap in the wall, a single rectangle opening guarded by men with large serious looking guns. "Civilian gate, I have a deal with them." Bryn tells me.

He stops and gets out of the truck instructing me to stay put while he meets with two of them, hands them a small black rectangle they open to pull out papers. I watch them circle to the back of the truck, glance over the items and while back there take another item from Bryn's hands, this one produced from his pocket and passed quickly from hand to hand before disappearing into a camouflage fatigue pocket.

The circle back around the truck not even glancing at me as Bryn climbs back in, we drive forward through the gate into a narrow space between a long row of metal buildings. I lean to the side staring up their walls at the un-uniform windows cut out starting a good ten feet about the ground. Some of them have glass, others have material covers, a few are rimmed at the bottom with roughly hewn boxes sprouting green plants of various shapes and types.

"Herbs," Bryn tells me when I ask about them. Some of them are for food, but most of them are medicine related. "Hard to find a doctor here on the bad side." He grumbles.

We continue on for a while without passing another truck or car in sight until we reach a wider section this one allowing us to drive along passing a few other scattered vehicles on our left side. The City is huge, and mostly filthy; the majority of the buildings are made of various colors of sheet metal, a few are brick or concrete or wood. "Don't open the windows" Bryn cautions me and I glance at him, "Not a lot of working plumbing here, these structures," he indicates one of the metal squares with its un-even windows cut at varying heights in completely different sizes. "The original government put them up; they were only supposed to house people temporarily, and maybe two or three families. Most of them hold closer to ten or fifteen now." He scowls at the next one we pass. "Miserable."

"If it is so miserable, why do they not leave?"

"They can't, in order to get rations everyone has to contribute something to the system—they have to live here because they have to work inside the City. They don't get a choice. Work or starve—though most of them are close to starving already."

"Then how are you and Ethan able to stay out of the City? You do not grow anything, what do you contribute?"

Bryn looks away from me, eyes locked on the road. "I served my time, it cost me enough."

"I don't understand."

He glances at me. "Some other time, we're here." He pulls us onto a side street between several mixed buildings, before turning right into one and taking us down. I press my hands to the dash in surprise when the nose of the truck dips down.

"Where are we?" I follow him out of the truck into a concrete room where we are parked. "Is this where you are taking the furniture?" I stare around the empty space while Bryn leads me to a plain grey steel door.

"No this is where we hopefully get some answers," he tells me holding the door open for me to go through.

We walk up a flight of darkly lit stairs to a metal mesh landing and then down its length to a door. Bryn raps on it with his knuckles and waits. A recessed rectangle in the door slides away there's a suspicious male voice from the other side of the pass. "Who is it?"

"It's Colt, I need to see Will."

A moment of silence follows while something heavy shifts behind the door and I wonder why Bryn would use his second name for this. Then there is a tense, "Hang on," from the other side. The rectangle snaps shut and there's the sound of voices before a few sharp heavy clicks tone from the door. Which I find odd considering how thin the surrounding metal walls are.

_Like paper_, a disconnected voice notes, and I instantly _know_ that is the weakest spot. I wonder idly if I had on sturdier shoes if I could kick my way through. I glance down at Bryn's heavy scuffed boots. _Those would work, _some disjointed part of my brain supplies, almost purring in approval_._

Bryn follows my downward gaze then leans into me with a quickly whispered. "What?"

I look up again, shrug. The door is opening.

There is a thin blonde young man standing in its opening. He doesn't exactly grin when he sees Bryn, but he doesn't look unfriendly either. "Long time no see. You don't call, you don't write…"

Bryn shrugs. "I have a life. I found something that might interest you, but I need information."

"About what?"

"I don't know yet."

"Kinda cryptic bullshit is that Colt?!"

"The kind that might help you."

The blond grumbles under his breath shifting on his feet. Apparently notices me for the first time. "Hello Goddess of the apocalypse!" He jerks his head to me staring at Bryn, "She with you?"

"Touch her and I'll pick you apart limb from limb, very, _very_ slowly Will." The threat sounds very real in that tone.

Will shrugs, "Can't blame a guy for trying, come on in, you know the way." He levels his eyes at Bryn who purposely looks away.

We follow Will inside, down a metal hall and into what I instantly recognize as a lab. My pulse leaps up staring at the metal table and the instruments.

"So what's this information you need, don't tell me it's your standard rush pregnancy test please…"

"It's not." Bryn snarls not looking at me. "Will, this is Charlie." Will greets me and I answer with a quiet hello. "Charlie was on Highway One in the middle of the night during one of my runs, right between the lines of district five and six. She says she escaped from a military base there."

Will is looking at me. "We both know there's no military base there Colt." His tone is peculiar, his expression doesn't match…I stare back and forth between them both.

Bryn stares back at him. "Except for Section Six."

I whip my head around so quick to stare up at him my neck spasms.

"Oh, well yes except for that. Doesn't exist, total malarkey, it's like area 51 in the good old days…are you an Alien Charlie?" Will asks leaning closer to me. I turn my head to look at him again, narrowing my eyes.

"It exists." I tell him staring back before rattling off the only location I know for six, a string of numbers that mean nothing to me but that I have heard many times.

Will stares back at me before glancing at Bryn again. "Colt is she serious?"

"As a Geek bite." Bryn tells him.

Which I would imagine is pretty serious stuff.

* * *

Several minutes later I'm sitting on a cold metal table that makes my spine shudder and my skin prickle with too many unpleasant memories to name. Bryn is standing next to me while Will gathers things to take my blood.

"How do you know about section six?" My stomach is churning.

Bryn stares at me then shrugs and looks away, "It's a rumor, there's lots of them; rumors that is. It's what Will's group runs on. Rumors of a cure—not just for bites but to actually prevent them; Rumors that there are people who can control the Geeks not just go un-noticed by them. Like the Tweens, only way more powerful, like Geek-whispers." He shrugs again.

"_Tweens_?" I stare at him.

"The _Betweens_; people who were born immune, not just to the bite but to the freak's hunger completely. If a Tween was standing in the yard with you that night the Geek would have walked right past them as long as they were standing still, it would ignore them completely and try to eat you—nobody knows why. It's rare though. Most of the real ones get taken into military service from childhood."

"How could someone control the Geeks?" I could see them, the _real_ them locked away inside…but that has always been the extent of it.

"No one can, it's a load of crap, but people want to believe in something, and God's not doing so hot right now what with the dead walking around eating people. Theory with the Tweens used to be they weren't completely human, not alive but not dead. Hence the label Between. But now that we know the Turn was caused by a mutated protozoa attaching to the base of the spinal column—no one knew exactly what they were looking for back then, and it's so microscopic in normal people that you can't see it at all without this super fancy microscope—"

"Which as you can imagine," Will butts in, "was more than a little difficult to get our hands on after the world went to Hell." He sets a tray on the table and keeps talking. "We have two very important Tween Retrievers to thank for that miracle, Chance and Church, they did great work back in their day. Anyway so this tiny creature, a Naegleria fowleri, it mutates right? No one knows why just one day Wham! It's in everybody; I mean it's normally found in water and soil so who knows maybe we all had it a long time and then something turned it on and that's why when you die you get back up and eat people."

"Because of the Naggy leera—"

"Naegleria fowleri," Will repeats. "Comfy?"

"What?" I stare at him wondering if he might be related to Libs with his topic change.

"Are you comfortable, I need to take blood." He indicates my arm.

I nod offering him my arm."It is best to try for that vein." I tell him.

Will nods, "That's very helpful, thank you." He takes a moment getting himself ready before taking my arm and bracing it against the table so he can take a sample there.

I try not to move as he pokes me, filling little vials with dark red blood. I turn my head to see Bryn watching the needle in my arm; he looks a little green. "Bryn, he is touching me." I tell him seriously.

He stares back at me one side of his mouth quirking north, "Charlie. Did you just make a joke?"

_I think I did._

I turn back to Will who seems to be almost done. "What does that have to do with section six?" I ask.

Will blinks up at me his large rimmed glasses making him appear a bit owlish. "Well only everything!" He says. "It's been almost eighteen years since that discovery, eighteen years! And we've had the vaccine to stop the bite from activating the individual strands by blocking the spores in the bloodstream," He trails off noting my expression.

"Look it's like mixing two different blood types right? You already have an infection, your body thinks that's normal; but Bryn bites you—" my eyes dart to Bryn for a moment and he shakes his head, "and now you've got Bryn spores in your blood!" I continue to stare at him picturing tiny spores of Bryn. "The spores! They cause the meningeal reaction to take place; it's literally one organism fighting the other for your brain…which unfortunately causes your body to go haywire and all the winner is left with is the tendrils it grows into your dendrites and spinal column to get you up and moving and BAM!" I jump. "It's in the driver's seat!"

Will stares at me practically quivering with excitement over a bug inside people's brains. "You are an odd man." I tell him resisting the urge to raise my fingers to my scalp and scratch like I can feel one there...under my skin. I've got enough problems in my head without adding bugs in the mix. I frown.

"Right well we can't all be nerds," he sniffs turning away with my blood to start up several machines.

"What does that have to do with section six?" I try again. But it's Bryn who answers.

"Will and the others believe the government has had a cure for this whole mess a long time ago, but that the military leaders are keeping it secret for themselves."

"No they're keeping it secret because they like all of us toiling away as slaves while they sit on gold gilded thrones lording over our every breath!" Will spits viciously, he rounds on us pointing his finger at me savagely. "They know Charlie, they know!"

When he turns back to the machine I stare at Bryn wide eyed until he leans closer to me. "Is he crazy?" I ask quietly.

"You're the expert you tell me," Bryn returns and his lips turn up.

_Great. _

"Now let's talk about this condition," Will pipes back up moving closer again.

"Charlie changed the other day, and I think it's happened before this too. She got stronger…reaction times quicker, she ripped a few Geeks apart."

"You did what?" Will is blinking at me again. I have the sudden urge to rip the glasses off his face and throw them on the floor. I stare at him instead.

"I don't remember."

"Well that's really interesting, It could be an emotional response." He turns away from me sifting through a few items on the tray before selecting one. He turns back around and promptly stabs me in the thigh with a long sharp needle. The shock of it zings of my leg sharp and bright making me gasp.

"The Fuck do you think you're doing?!" Bryn's got Will pinned to the wall, his forearm almost crushing his throat. I realize Will's feet are two inches off the ground. Will chokes and garbles something unintelligible.

"Are you alright Charlie?" Bryn's glancing at me over his shoulder, ignoring the fact that Will is turning a bit purple.

"Let him down," I grip the needle in my hand and pull it out. If there is blood it doesn't show through the dark material covering my leg.

Bryn lets him drop to the floor before slamming him back into the wall once more. "You out of your god damn mind?! Try that shit again Foster and see what happens!" His tone is harsh making Will flinch away from him; or maybe that's because he doesn't want to get slammed into the wall again…

"Alright, alright I'm sorry!" Will shrugs his jacket back onto his shoulder. He looks at me then at Bryn again. "It's not brought on by pain, at least not to the extent that I'm willing to duplicate in the lab…" He clears his throat maybe because Bryn is glaring at him again. "Something triggers it though; could be severe emotional response, it could be a life or death instinct."

"No, Charlie was attacked a few days ago by a Geek in the yard, nothing like that happened." Bryn crosses his arms, waiting I guess to hear more theories.

"Maybe the threat wasn't real enough," Will suggests.

"She was pinned down by a hungry corpse, I think that's _real_ enough." Bryn growls.

"Okay, I'm just guessing here! I'll have to run some blood work, but that takes time—"

"How long?"

"Few hours?"

"We'll make the delivery then come back."

Will nods, "That should work."

"If you tell anyone!"

Will throws his hands up in the air Bryn's finger inches from his face. "Dude whoa! I want to bring those motherfuckers down as much as the next honest guy! Remember that? Relax, whatever they're working on it's a big secret and when it comes to these guys that's rarely good. I won't breathe a word to anyone. Few hours, tops."

Bryn turns back to me to grab my elbow helping me off the table an unnecessary, "Come on, let's go" verbalized with him leading me back out of the building and to the truck.

"Is everything okay?"

He glances at me starting it up. "Yeah, I just didn't really want to leave without answers."

"Do you not trust him?" I ask.

"If he thinks there's a chance it could change things, destabilize the government's position he's on our side. He won't say anything until he knows for sure."

"So he is okay?"

Bryn looks conflicted once more. He shrugs. "Sorta."

_Sorta_ doesn't make my stomach feel that good.

* * *

**Notes:** Anyone catch it? anyone? xD


	16. Chapter 15

**Warnings:** This chapter is **Rated M**!

**Notes:** _ Super thanks to all the readers and reviewers! _

_Edited for a few typos 7/6, hope it helps!_

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen**

* * *

We were doing so good.

We'd made our drop-offs; gotten paid and no one had reported us; Either for Bryn's illegal activities, or my simply existing. We just needed to make it back to Will's bizarre lab to get my test results. I should have known our luck wouldn't hold out.

I am following Bryn up a crowded side street pressed with loads of people for something he calls a grease truck. It's late, dusk is falling and my stomach growls plaintively at the thought of something to eat for once instead of protesting. It's been a long day filled with anxiety over being discovered by the wrong people, and bizarre interactions with City dwellers all over the place. Will had been just the start. I'm tired, my feet hurt and the prospect of tasting what Bryn calls a Philly before hopefully grabbing some answers about whether I was safe to be around and driving the long way home sounds really good.

Off to our right a truck load of soldiers rumbles up the street. Literally. I keep walking beside Bryn hoping they don't look this way. One of them catches my eye and immediately does a double take. And then he points.

"Does that look to you like they see someone they recognize?" I ask Bryn without turning my head. And I guess he thinks so too because in the next second he grabs my hand and pulls me backward against the majority flow of the crowd.

Behind us tires screech. Soldiers shout and we break into a run down a narrow side alley, empty except for trash and puddles that smell pungently like things I'd rather not think of.

I'm about to ask him if he knows where the Hell we're going when we pop back out on a busy street and Bryn's vice grip on my hand becomes the only reason we're not separated in the crowd. As it is I'm jostled painfully by a few shoulders and chests. I catch an elbow in a spot sensitive enough to make me wince. I have just enough time to glance up at the flickering strobing lights plastered to metal walls overhead. The heart stuttering boom of several different beats jumbling all together at once in a racket that can't be ignored. And then Bryn's grip yanks me down another damn near deserted alleyway between two walls of dark sheet metal reverberating with heavy booming sounds and I have just enough time to think that _this is no good_ with the shouting behind us—all they have to do is turn and see us alone in this alley with nowhere to run.

But then a man in heavy leather with a bald scary head marked with jumbled pictures of ink takes a thick roll of something from Bryn's hand and we're through a steel door without a word and standing in a dark black-painted hallway.

If I thought it was loud in the street before, it's nothing compared to the din inside. Beats loud enough to shake my heart in my chest assaults my ears making me wish I could press my fingers in them to muffle the sound. Bryn pulls me down the black-washed smoky hallway so dark I can barely see the back of his head, apparently immune to the dreadful sound and then I'm wincing at the bright explosion of lights in the main room.

Strobing flashes of green and red and purple swirl against the floor and walls. People are everywhere—all of them young some of them breathing smoke with every exhale in a way I find fascinating for only a moment because there are far more interesting displays to see. Apparently these people do not care as much about being naked as Bryn does judging by the mostly pink and sweat slicked girl straddling the lap of an equally disrobed man to our right. I watch a little wide eyed as she rises and falls over him head tipped back until she catches me watching her and crooks a finger giving me a sly grin. I turn away cheeks flushing certain that what they are doing is what Bryn tried to do with me before. I don't understand how she can look so pleased when it _hurt_.

Bryn appears worryingly frozen beside me. I wait staring up at him still gripping his hand certain that he must have a plan. Bryn must realize that we're both wearing a lot more clothing then the rest of the club because he drops my hand a second later and rips his shirt over his head. I stare at him wide eyed while he shoves half its length into his back pocket leaving his now bare chest colored in a wash of swirling distracting lights.

He takes my hand again and leans into me, almost over me with his height, his mouth pressed right to my ear and even though he's damn near shouting I only catch the words _SkinClub_ and _blend in_. And then in a sudden unexpected lull in the ear shattering beat, the crystal clear words of "I'm sorry."

I have a split second to wonder, _for what?_ And then the pounding beat is back making me jump and _my _shirt is over my head leaving me staring at him a little wide eyed in the see-through clinging ice-blue lace camisole Libby gave me to wear underneath so I would blend into the City crowds 'trendy' clothes.

And _Okay_, I think after the initial shock; now we look _a little_ more like these skin clubbers…and then Bryn's hands grip the thighs of my black tights under my short black skirt and those are yanked down too as he crouches in front of me carefully lifting my feet to pull them free over my borrowed shoes. His hands slide back up my bare legs from calf to thigh sending a flood of heat racing out from his touch. I feel a little dizzy by the time he stands back up.

Bryn's looking over my shoulder now, his hands reach around my back grabbing the tie holding my braid. He jerks it free skating rough fingers through all-too-orderly strands twisting and tugging my locks into a wild curtain that fans down my back and tumbles around my face. He doesn't pause to look at me, gripping my hand again and pulling me past the young woman still sliding enthusiastically over her male friend her face now contorting oddly. Maybe she likes pain, I have heard of that before.

I swallow around a suddenly dry throat taking in the people we pass and the couplings, because even half-dressed we are still wearing _far more_ than many of the people here—and we are doing none of their apparently preferred activities…

Bryn's still got my pilfered tights and 'trendy' shirt in his other hand, is using his vice grip on my wrist to haul me through a sweaty press of bodies. He snatches an unattended bag off an otherwise empty table shoving my clothes inside after reaching his hand in to yank something small and rectangular out of it. He hands the bag back to me retaining the small plastic piece and keeping us moving, now up a short flight of stairs to a metal catwalk—I assume so we can see more of the club. I shove my free hand through the large metal rings at the top that seem to serve as handles for this particular bag, clutching the stolen black leather against my chest like it's my own. Twice while we're walking Bryn uses his other hand to snatch someone else's when they reach for me. The second time it happens he has to stop completely glaring viciously at the guy who tries again before he apparently thinks better of it and moves off.

Bryn twists me around him when we reach the edge of the room pressing my back to a dark sticky counter that reaches the middle of my spine. He steps close, boots on either side of mine blocking me from the view of the room with his chest, one hand on either side of me taping the plastic card against the top. He hands it to a tall woman on the other side, shouts something to her I can't hear, but somehow she must because she moves off for a moment and he waits staring down at me until she brings something back. There's a glass of something clear in her fingers that she hands off sliding it towards us sloshing a bit onto the already wet bar top without a second look tossing the plastic numbered card back onto the bar and moving off to collect more of them.

There are less people standing right here but only marginally so. All around us they seem to congregate in packs. Bryn offers me the glass. It looks like water but the smell wafting up the inside of the glass tells me clearly it is not. It burns my nose when I sniff it cautiously. I do not think he would hand me something dangerous on purpose, others are drinking the same thing so it must be safe. I taste it and almost spit it onto the floor shaking my head and staring at him wide eyed with a mixture of awe and disgust when he retrieves the glass and swallows it down without flinching. _Alcohol,_ some part of my brain informs me. _Moonshine_. I watch him drink still fighting the urge to scrub my nails over my tongue where it feels like whatever was in the glass is still tingling and burning my taste buds. I realize Bryn is watching different sides of the room every time he turns his head slightly. He spends most of his time checking the space adjoining to what appears to be the front door of this club. He scowls suddenly and takes my hand once more abandoning his now empty glass on the counter top and leading me further into the room.

We reach the other side of the room bumping into people left and right during out short walk before Bryn pulls me up onto another metal walkway; then up a short rear catwalk. All around us bodies are grinding and sweating and I realize more than half of the room is _not_ dancing like I first thought…

I feel frozen to the metal grate, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach knowing this will _never _work. If we can't blend in with the people here they will spot us in moments when they come. Even less dressed we do not blend in at all. I turn my head to try and tell him so—inform him that maybe we can still escape, slip out the back. He's not looking at me now. I follow Bryn's line of sight and realize with a rush of fear that soldiers are in the club now, scanning the crowd near the door.

I turn back to look at him panicked just in time to see a wash of pure determination plaster itself across his face. He lets go of my hand so he can grab my hips instead. Lifting me up and spinning us both around and dropping my ass against the few inches of railing between the catwalk and the open air above the gyrating sex-driven crowd.

My hands have found their way to sweat-slicked shoulders bracing myself so I'm less apt to fall. Bryn presses closer, parts my knees with his thigh, my skirt rides higher. He moves between them hands pressing flat against my lower back wound around my sides sliding my frame against him. I swallow and flush with his rough calloused palms catching on fine lace dragging it higher up my back. He's bracing my shoulder blades with two firm hands so he can lean into me and keep me securely seated on the rail. I still only catch half the words but his breathe against my ear makes me shiver and my nipples pebble without being cold trapped beneath slightly scratchy lace pressed against warm chest.

The words _blend in_ and _pretend_, tumble through my brain disjointed and scrambled with the incredible din and the sound of blood rushing in my head with Bryn pressing so close. I'm nodding along still wondering exactly what he plans to do and then he ducks his head to the curve of my neck and I have a split second to think _oh_, as his mouth moves over my skin, just under my chin. His lips parting applying a mind-altering slick wet suction that makes my mind go oddly blank except for a startled _oh, God_ and my heart suddenly tries to beat it's way right through my ribs. I don't know if I can do this…not just for _pretend_, not with _him_. And then his tongue rasps up the side of my neck and teeth slide over my ear lobe and my eyes clench shut and he moves even closer, spreading me wider one hand skirting down my spine pressing me forward pulling me practically into his lap.

I'm straddling his hips—spread wide my now poor excuse for a skirt bunched just under my ass and if anyone were to walk under us right now and look up they'd get one hell of a show because Libby hadn't let me put on anything under those tights. The metal rings of our stolen bag are starting to hurt the inside of my elbow so I drop my arm letting it slide to the floor before bringing my hand back to tangle unhindered in his hair.

The rough thread of his pants creates an interesting friction on my inner thighs—enough to have me sucking in a startled breath and that was before he rocks into me and I can unexpectedly feel I'm not the only one who's having difficulty separating this play acting from the real thing… He grinds into me again and I press my teeth to my bottom lip to stifle the sound trying to work its way out—except that's ridiculous I realize. I can't even hear _myself_ moan. And such a sound even if it could be heard would only help us to blend in with our current crowd. So I tip my head back and let it out. Bryn's hand is sliding up my thigh squeezing and rubbing in the most distracting way. His thumb pressing mind-blowing intricate patterns to my inner thigh rising slowly higher—I supposed under the pretense of looking like we are doing more then we actually are, but the effect on me is the same.

His mouth is working its way over my bare collarbone but he jerks free and leans back to stare at me eyes wide breathing too fast when his fingertips encounter a neat twist of curls instead of cotton or anything else covering my flushed skin. He looks a little out of control with his eyes wide and his hair mussed—the wild light show playing over sweat damp skin and that was before his eyes shifted to wickedly sinful molten gold.

A fresh sweat breaks out over my body under that look. I grip his skin tighter while he stares an anxious question at me and a hard shudder runs up my spine when his mouth descends on mine a moment later, and I have just enough time to nod my head desperately _yes_, clinging to him and then he's buried knuckle deep with two fingers and my back arches and he swallows up my desperate moan mouth crashing into my own.

The look he shoots me several moments later finally breaking the kiss sends a rush of fresh heat to my already over-taxed core. Heightens the sensations spiraling around his fingers still moving between my thighs while I pant and moan unable to control my breathing. And I don't think either of us is pretending anymore, if we ever were…

I rock against his hand while he drives into me with rough strokes that are breath staggeringly perfect. His mouth is greedy and possessive over mine while I cling to his frame terrified of letting go when I feel so out of control. My fingernails leaving little half-moon indentations over bare shoulders he barely notices. My other fingers twisted in the long strands of his hair tight enough to ache.

A random hand enters my vision reaching for my bare shoulder when he breaks the kiss again and I think, _Shit,_ certain it's a soldier coming for me until Bryn simply snarls and slaps another random partier's hand away. I stare up at him wide eyed and he just smirks at me moving his now free hand down to grip my ass and wrench me closer, and then he does something with his fingers inside me that has me seeing stars.

My head snaps back and I'm comparing them to the flashing lights soaring overhead and his hand is the same rhythm as the music pounding in my chest. His mouth moves over my exposed neck, fingers tangling in my sweat damp hair dragging our bodies flush chest to slick chest. His tongue slides up my neck while I clench around him. I tilt my head, twist my chin to capture his lobe between my teeth—touch him the way he's touching me. He seems to go a little weak in the knees; leaning into me more heavily when I suck the sting away. He shudders against me drawing in a ragged breath against my skin.

I'm gasping words like _more_, and _please_, even though there is no way I can be heard over this racket—Bryn's hungry mouth meets mine again insistent and demanding just like the tempo of his fingers plunging through my folds. He shifts against me—in me; curling his next thrust with the rise of his elbow and a twist of his hand and something inside me goes the color of spun honey; warm and liquid gold. I tip over something I can't name, shudder and buck into his hand rocked by waves of intense pleasure so bright for a few earth shattering moments the rest of the club is drowned out to the roar of white noise.

Bryn is still kissing me as I come quivering and shuddering back down, floating back into myself one trickle of awareness at a time. The aftermath washing through my belly no longer matches the pulse of the music, or the frantic rush of blood in my head. It's achingly sweet and slow like his fingers barely slipping through my fluttering heat, gliding with the ebbing rhythm of my first release. I cling to him when he pulls away, moving just enough to grip the back of my head all but crushing me to his chest. My ear pressed over his heartbeat, measuring the racing tempo against my own feeling my world tilt behind closed lids.

Something has changed, something big.

His other hand leaves me finally my inner muscles still trembling and shuddering even in his absence. He drags his hand firmly down my back almost cupping my ass with my legs wound around his hips—a move I don't remember making. I realize as he presses staggered kisses to my hair and to one bare shoulder and then the other that he's also looking for our pursuers as I desperately attempt to gather my wits. I twist enough in his grasp to catch sight of three of them still near the door arguing with two large men in black collared shirts and a couple half-naked girls. I guess they pissed off enough rich kids to get thrown out.

_Good_, I think viciously. All in all, this has not turned out so bad. I press my face to Bryn's bare chest feeling his hand cup the nape of my neck, thumb sliding in soft circles against my skin as he holds me close.

And then the screaming starts.

At first I think it's just another club goer who's a little…verbal. But then it's several voices and that seems odd even for this crowd. Though I am in no way an expert on what we just did, I know _this_ sound all too well. Their voices are high pitched in terror and pain.

Bryn's hands tighten on my skin and I turn to see people stumbling terrified and intoxicated out of a back room. My eyes focusing on a guy with greyish blue skin and a wash of fresh blood dripping down his toned bare chest from his open mouth. He's wearing some kind of leather pants that catch the flashing multi-hued lights as he staggers forward reaching for half-naked kids already scattering in a blind panic.

I feel rather than hear Bryn curse where he's pressed against my body. And then he's sweeping me off the railing onto shaky legs and dragging me through the mad press of the crowd to the now wide open doors while the soldiers move in the opposite direction. We melt into the chaos, jostled by elbows and knees and hands pressing forward, and sideways desperate to just get away.

Bryn's body is pressed flush to my back both arms locked around my waist shielding me form most of the more aggressive contact with too many fear stricken party goer's pressed close. I worry we'll be trampled in the mad rush for the doors when the whole front wall—doorways included simply rolls up to the roof and excited and panicked half-naked youths spill onto the street in a frantic flood. _Smart_. I think, especially when anyone of your patrons could decide to eat the rest of the party…

Bryn transfers his grip to my hand and we're off running again my shaky legs trembling and my lungs burning. We race down the long street before turning a corner and Bryn just stops. I don't get a chance to wonder why when he spins, lifting me up and hauling me against his chest, my legs go around his waist on some primal instinct and we nearly tumble backwards. He barely gets a hand out in time to stop us before we slam with the full force of both our weight into another metal wall. As it is my back stings with the blunt contact but _I don't care,_ because he's kissing me—_brutally._

I'm melting, and trembling and hanging by a silver thread, wracked with full body shakes by the time he pulls away. He sets me down just as swiftly as he started it—maybe remembering we might still be followed.

We continue down the alley, cross three side streets, and I start to think we're okay—we made it.

A giggle slips out of me and I clap my free hand over my lips not sure that's appropriate, even with the shiny silvery washes of residual pleasure still spiraling under my skin and the thrill of escape the rush of adrenaline humming in my veins. People have died barely twenty feet from where we stood, and more were injured…laughter is probably not right. But Bryn looks back at me still holding my hand and he grins. And then we're both laughing, and running and laughing more as we turn the corner. Right until I crash head on into a woman coming out of a corner door of the building.

My hand is ripped from Bryn's grasp as we both hit the ground hard. Wide familiar blue eyes stare up at me from an angular but overall pretty face. Bryn is scrambling to pull me up sputtering apologies neither of us register. Then she speaks and he freezes right along with me sucking in a tight breath.

"Sariel, I was wondering when you might show up to kill me."

_And, what the hell?!_


	17. Chapter 16

_Short Chapter, Sorry! I hope you enjoy it anyway! : P_

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**Chapter Sixteen**

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I stare at her aghast. "Dr. Patrice."

She found me, or I guess I found her—and completely on accident. I did not even know she was in the City. But it doesn't matter now because she _knows_ me, and she'll make me go back. Shock fills her expression even as Bryn pulls me up; is shoving me behind him like she's pulled a gun—but she hasn't. She's just sitting there on the sidewalk in stunned silence.

"We have to go Charlie," Bryn says.

"Charlie?" She utters staring at me, and I can't look away even when I try.

"Charlie! Now!" Bryn is pulling me.

"Wait!" Dr. Patrice throws a hand out gripping my wrist climbing to her feet. "You're you." She says voice slightly awed.

"Lady, I think you've mistaken us for someone else." Bryn says tugging me, but she doesn't let go. Her eyes wash over my appearance and Bryn's in a quick flicking appraisal and one corner of her mouth turns up. "Have you been clubbing?" She asks voice odd.

"Yes," I answer by reflex and her lips slide further up.

"Charlie! We have to go!"

"You won't make it," She tells him over my shoulder, eyes still locked on me. "They're all on high alert due to the disturbance four blocks over, an attack at a night club." And I don't like the look she's giving me. "That's why I was rushing home you see, I knew you'd come to find me."

"I didn't do it." I find myself saying. And she smiles looking suddenly sad.

"No, of course not. It never is you."

The words finally seem to get through to Bryn who steps forward getting between us once more, voice hostile. "What do you know about Charlie's other half?"

She smiles at him. The same expression she used to use in the lab before she snuck me sticks of honey. "An awful lot I'm afraid." She turns back to me. "Charlie," she says it like she's testing the name; seeing if it fits.

I find for the first time in my life I don't care what she thinks.

She turns back to Bryn. "You've seen her?" She asks.

"Yes,"

"Well then we're all in an awful lot of trouble, you best come inside." She turns waving us toward the corner unit of the building she was leaving when I plowed into her.

"Charlie no…" Bryn's voice is tight as I hesitate in the street. Trucks are moving several blocks down. Too far to have made us out just yet. But they won't be long. There is nowhere else to run with them so close.

"If she means us harm it's only the difference of being shot inside or in the back running through the streets." I eye the trucks and he blanches at the choice, obviously realizing we can no longer make it.

"Hurry," Dr. Patrice waves holding the door open.

Bryn moves closer to me, voice low. "It could be a trap." I stare up at him, take in those warm amber eyes, so bright with emotion they almost swirl as each one shifts across his expression vying for dominance.

"Then it is already sprung." I answer and he squeezes my hand.

We scramble up the stairs and she shuts the door behind us leaving the three of us standing in a front entryway of smooth white floors and crisp light green walls while the trucks blissfully rumble right past outside the warped colored glass.

"If you wish to escape the City without further conflict you will have to lay low for a while," She tells us eyes flitting between both our faces before settling on Bryn's instead of mine. "They'll expect her to hit first, attack, not hide."

Bryn stares at her jaw clenching. "Charlie's not attacking anything; we just want to get away."

"Well, yes of course the one you call Charlie does. But that's the problem" Dr. Patrice says. "You're not just dealing with Charlie are you?"

His jaw clenches further. "No. She turned into something else…" He thankfully doesn't tell her _what_ caused it, but my cheeks flush bright red anyways.

"And that's a very big problem, Sariel is not supposed to wake up on her own."

"Who?" I ask; a sinking feeling in my gut.

"Sariel, is what all the research was for; all the tests and the exercises. We only started working with… Charlie… more closely when they realized a few years ago that Sariel was a complete failure."

"In what way?" Bryn's voice is tight.

"She's completely uncontrollable, mute, violent to the point of homicidal…When I heard that she had escaped I assumed that it was Sariel that had taken over on her own; despite the safeguards and that she was the one that broke out of the lab, killed the soldiers—"

"I didn't kill anybody!" I gasp eyes wide. _Did I?_

"No one blames you," she tells me, and that hardly makes me feel any better. I turn to Bryn wide eyed even though I have no idea how he can help.

"Charlie like her mother was special, from birth they cultivated her other half, nursed it and it grew like we'd never seen before…became _aware;_ the projects original purpose as I understand it was multifaceted; could Sariel be used as a weapon should we be attacked by another invading force using the dead—or potentially overwhelmed by the dead themselves. And there was work on a better cure for a while…among other things. But it soon became clear that while Sariel was aware to some degree and far more intelligent than the average infected corpse it wasn't enough to be _reasonable,_ there was nothing to tether her to commands. She was not controllable. Repetitive testing, conditioning, positive reinforcement, and…negative; nothing worked. There was talk of ending the project many times…"

"You mean killing Charlie." Bryn snarls, expression livid.

"Charlie is simply the vessel! That's why they never bothered to name her! Destroying her would guarantee that something far worse didn't wipe us out."

"I'm sure that's a comforting thought for you to hold onto while you murder an innocent girl for what _you_ did to her from birth!" Bryn almost growls.

"I begged them not to terminate the project, and they listened—we tried cultivating the same instincts in Charlie, the strength, the fighting instincts, the connection Sariel could make with the _Others_… But it was not the same, and in doing so we weakened whatever gap we formed between the two originally when she was a child. It was completely unintentional at the time, and after Sar…Charlie's escape I realized it had allowed Sariel to be more _aware_…if you could call it that. And now if you've seen her take over when Charlie is in full control by _force_ then you're in terrible danger, we all are… Sariel is a monster I helped to create…any lives she takes; the blood is on my hands as well."

"…and what about mine?" my voice feels very small.

"I'm afraid you're just another victim," Dr. Patrice looks at me indifferently. "Perhaps, her very first," and her eyes have gone so cold I wonder if I'm not already dead. I don't even realize I've been backing away until I hit the wall.

"So what you're saying is she should just leave with you; go back to a life of imprisonment and torture before someone out there gets tired of their failed science experiment and then what? You shoot her in the head?" Even from here I can see the way his whole frame shakes in outrage. His voice wavers harsh and sharp with emotion.

"It is the humane thing to do, if not for herself then for others. Charlie is the only humanity of the two. She'll make the right choice." She's looking at Bryn, while I flounder, struggle to make sense of her words. "Before she gets you killed." And then suddenly it does. She's talking about the other me killing Bryn… I had not even thought of that possibility. My blood runs cold.

"Charlie wouldn't hurt me," He sounds so certain. I'm no longer sure…about _anything,_ I realize.

"You don't get it, it wouldn't _be_ Charlie!" She says. "If she's switching back and forth and you have no idea what's triggering it then at any moment she could slide into her aggressive nature, possibly to never come back out, but even if she did; how do you think that would make Charlie feel?! Waking up to find her hands buried in your throat?"

"Probably better than it would feel for me," Bryn answers glibly. I wonder for a fleeting second if he drank more alcohol in the club then I realized…

"This is not a joke!" She says. And for the first time in a long while I find myself agreeing with her. _I didn't realize what I was. No one told me. I put them all in danger, Bryn and Ethan and Libby…_

They're both staring at me and I realize I must have said that out loud. Bryn is shaking his head. "No, no. I don't believe that. I saw this Sariel before, she was aggressive yes, and rough but she saved Libby's life!"

"Whatever you think you saw is merely a coincidence. It was pure dumb luck if your friend was spared while she was awake, that you yourself were spared even." Doctor Patrice is staring at Bryn.

"We were attacked in the forest, and Charlie…wasn't Charlie…She said Libby's name and tore the Geeks attacking her to pieces."

"Are you sure?"

"It was pretty damn memorable." Bryn says drily.

"No, I mean about the voice." Dr. Patrice says. "She spoke?"

"Yes,"

"Then it could not have been Sariel, it had to be Charlie…"

"Charlie doesn't usually go around ripping people's throats out with her hands and teeth." Bryn says a little more bluntly then I'm ready for. My gut churns. I feel like gagging suddenly.

"No, she does not." Dr. Patrice amends glancing at me. "I thought once…but it is not possible." She shakes her head turning away suddenly like I've seen her do in the lab when she wants to think about test results in private.

"Lady I don't care if you thought it a hundred times, if you know something that can help Charlie…"

"Once there was an incident in the lab…Sariel turned on one of the soldiers…a _very specific_ soldier in a room full of them when he was not the closest target she could have destroyed." She hesitates glancing at me.

"What does that have to do with-?"

"Because this particular soldier had done something nasty to Charlie just a few days before…no nothing like that," she adds seeing something on Bryn's face I don't. "But still, not nice. He called her filthy names; gave her a black eye…among other things." Bryn looks livid once more, shaking in outrage whether over her clinical tone or the thought of some nameless soldier doing harm to me, I don't know.

"Why don't I remember this?" I find myself asking hoping Bryn will not kill Dr. Patrice before we get more answers.

"Well, you were very young," Dr. Patrice tells me, her face going oddly soft for a moment.

I had meant _any_ of it. Because how does someone live with a fucking monster inside them and never know it? One that apparently regularly got up and took my body for walks…

"And you thought Sariel was protecting Charlie," Bryn suddenly says making some connection I've missed.

"I think avenging her would be a better word for it, God knows they tore her up pretty badly after the initial attack—Sariel got into fights with them all the time, it was part of the training Griss had her doing…but a lot of the time it wasn't planned. She would just—_go_ _off._"

"Gee, I can't imagine why." Bryn drawls.

"Do not judge me!" Dr. Patrice says suddenly. "I did what I could! Everyone has a job to do and I am no exception. If I had refused—even if I could have, they would have just found someone else to do the work. Someone who would not have cared so much."

"You're a real piece of work lady." Bryn tells her voice shaking.

And then the door exploded.


	18. Chapter 17

**Notes: **_Thanks to the readers and reviewers! _

_Please note the POV change for this chapter! :)_

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**Chapter Seventeen**

_(Bryn's POV)_

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"Charlie! Get down!"

Bryn dives to shield her the moment the door explodes inwards almost completely off its hinges. They both hit the wall with the force and disorientation of the explosion, a sizeable fragment of the door's wooden frame rebounding off his back with a sharp sting of pain. But at least it didn't impale him. His ears are instantly ringing to the point he's a bit disoriented still as he turns his body to face the source of the explosion. Thick grey smoke hangs in the air curling all around them on invisible currents. The heavy acrid air causing Charlie to choke; coughing viciously with her hands braced against his back for support. She gasps his name trying to clear her throat, obviously disoriented too.

He just needs a moment, he tells himself, a few seconds to form some kind of plan to keep her safe, get her out of here. But it's too late, absolutely no use; with all his training he knows that more than most. The knowledge sits in his gut like a heavy lead weight. But that doesn't stop his instincts from kicking in; trying desperately to shield her from the door and the men in military street uniforms pouring through into the interior of the smoke clogged room.

Soldiers fill the room, dispersed just right to block any exit; to make taking any one of them down in the hopes of getting away utterly futile. Ten heavily armed men surround them by his quick count though there are doubtless more waiting outside with whatever vehicle they came in. He's got one hand on his knife, cursing the fact that his gun, illegal to carry inside the City walls for civilians, is in his truck useless to them both when they desperately need it. If he had it she might have a chance.

Charlie's still behind him, hands pressed tight against his back, her palms warm on his skin with the cold sweat of fear dampening his lower back. His gut clenches in dread when she breathes his name again, barely audible between the rushing pulse of his heartbeat in his ears, the thunderous noise of soldiers barking orders for them not to move. Helplessness claws at his insides, twists his stomach into knots. There's nothing he can do, absolutely nothing at all.

"Drop it!" He does, it wouldn't have been much use against M-16's anyway.

"Grab the Bitch." One of them says. He tries to keep his body between them, receives a lightening quick fist to the face, a bright burst of pain and the taste of blood in return. Charlie's grip on his arm is effortlessly wrenched away. She's staring at him wide eyed, a frantic 'No!' coming out as she's hauled backwards by the soldier's hold on her arms.

"Keep your guns on the Bitch not the civilian!" The first one who spoke barks, clearly at odds with his current militia.

"Sir, she's detained," one of them starts.

"The fuck she is, you watch her; you hear me? But don't shoot her, we need her alive!"

"Let him go, please!" Charlie's bent forward the grip on her upper arms obviously painful with her elbows wrenched behind her back like broken bird wings. "Just let him go, please." She gasps her words towards the ground. Their leader turns his head to look at her before his eyes slide to Bryn's his gaze cold and detached. They move on quickly to the woman standing just a few feet from them. She's looking just a little shaken, her hands at her sides watching Charlie struggle again.

"Dr. Patrice," He greets, but the tone is tight and laced with disappointment. "Never expected it to be you,"

"What are you talking about?" She asks.

Bryn doesn't have to ask. He already knows. They want someone to blame; need someone to take the fall for their little experiment getting loose.

"I knew she couldn't have escaped without help!" He snarls in answer. "The Hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea what she could do to the civilian population? Not to mention the damaging publicity from the democracy movement! You're one of them aren't you?" He accuses suddenly while raising his arm. "I should have known,"

"Rogers I did nothing of the sort, she came to me—No wait Don'—"

He tries not to flinch at the sound of the gun, already expecting it long before it happens but the explosion sets his ears to ringing again the impossibly loud sound ringing off the walls of the enclosed space. Even a handgun is unexpectedly louder than one would imagine going off so close. Dr. Patrice's head snaps back on her neck, her arms jerking forward almost as if to overcorrect her balance while her spine curves backward in a soft 'C' and her knees buckle sending her to the floor.

Charlie's face has gone sheet white when Bryn looks at her. She's no longer struggling against the soldier's painful grip on both her arms. She staring horrified at the doctor's crumpled form, shaking her head slightly in disbelief. Her eyes lift to take in the red droplets spattering the front hall all the way to the ceiling before she turns to stare at him, real panic setting in as she starts to struggle again the low platform shoes Libby stuck her in slipping on the smooth tile while she strains to break the soldier's hold. She'd have little hope of breaking that grip even in her tennis shoes; and it would do them little good even if she did.

"Don't hurt him!" She's addressing Rogers, twisting and jerking towards them both.

"Let's go." Rogers snaps and the soldier with his gun digging into the spine of his back shoves him toward the door with a single hand on his shoulder.

"You heard him move it." He moves, glancing back to see that Charlie is doing the same, frantic wide eyes still fixed on him.

Down the front steps they're marched to the truck sitting just down the street. He could kick himself for missing it. He should have been watching the windows while they talked. If he had, then Dr. Patrice might not be dead, and they might have gotten away. Now he's a dead man. He's not stupid enough to believe they need him alive; they just shot one of their own without even a military trial. His gut churns harder on that thought. Foster was right, not that he really ever had doubts. Things had only gotten worse in his absence.

"Just let him go! Let Bryn go!" Behind him Charlie is still pleading with them voice quivering.

"Into the truck Bitch."

Anger burns through him like a branding iron, red hot in his gut. "_Stop_ calling her that."

"Sounds like lover-boy has a problem with the Bitch's classification!"

"I said get in the truck!" She's not. She's still fighting with him one leg up on the truck's edge bracing her weight, her leg shaking with the effort as he tries to shove her in. "Fucking Bitch!" He snarls when she elbows him. She only makes it ten feet before they grab her again.

"Rogers, Rogers! Let him go please, just let him walk away and I'll do whatever you want, I promise, I'll never run away again! Tell Griss, Tell him!"

Rogers stares at her his eyes like polished bits of cold hard steel. He reaches for his handgun, expression vicious and cruel, his lips curling with an upward tilt of deep satisfaction. "No, you'll do what I want because that's the way it is."

Time slows all around him. He turns his head to look at her, not particularly interested in staring down the barrel of the gun about to end his life. Begging won't change anything, he knows that. Watching and waiting for it to go dark certainly won't bring him comfort. He'd rather spend his last second or two looking at her, wishing he could go back and do things differently. He should have kept her away from the City, should have realized such an idea was idiotic at best, and suicidal for both of them at worst.

The handgun in Roger's outstretched arm cocks. The sound impossibly slow, harsh and metallic with an exaggerated heavy menacing click. He watches her eyes go wide, head shaking desperately, her mouth forms the first part of a grief-stricken and horrified "n—" and then her head snaps back without warning and her knees buckle so hard and fast she drags both the soldiers down after her pitching them both off balance. He watches torn between fascination and shock as her body contracts in the next moment, contorts in one lithe movement to right itself in the same instant her feet reset themselves on the pavement, bracing her weight a few inches wider in a firmer stance. Her spine bows back up in the mirror reverse of her previous movement. It's agile and graceful like a dancer on a stage. The motion also completely wrong, seemingly defying the very laws of physics by halting mid-fall to jerk back upright—as if something stronger, more in control of its body mechanics were taking over…

Her right arm jerks up higher than her head grabbing the soldiers throat in a strangle hold. Her left arm which was jerked free from the second soldier's grasp with the start of her initial backwards fall is raised now so she's gripping the first soldier's shoulder. She twists and darts forward in the last moments of her upwards bend ending up right under the soldier's unguarded throat snarling in a sound that sends cold shivers up one's spine as she jerks away.

Blood spills as she moves back, coats most of her throat and face with the heavy stream following in her wake already darkening the soldier's shirt as he jerks, twitches and fails to scream with what's left of his throat. Her hand closing around the ruined column of his windpipe while her other arm braces on his shoulder so she can kick her legs up using his height as leverage. She twists her body, rolling around mid-air to get her legs around the other soldier's head. Her hands leaving the first soldier taking a rent chunk of bloody throat with her fist while she completes the turn in the air splitting the shocked silence with an audible bone crunching snap. She twists, flipping off him as they both crumple towards the ground the soldiers lying dead while she lands on her feet like a cat.

Bryn's hands come up, two quick steps forward, a shift to the right, using the distraction to save his own life. He's shoving Roger's gun up and away in a frantic jerk so the shot crosses over his shoulder the sound deafening his left ear once more. He twists much less gracefully then her, but still effective in a lot of respects, then kicks gaining enough leverage to point the gun back at Roger's face. The second shot sends Rogers crumpling backwards to the ground. Rogers' lost weapon, now clasped white knuckle tight in Bryn's hand, a precious chance to even the odds in their battle for survival.

He takes in the make and model with a quick glance. Seven round chamber, two fired already; assuming Roger's started with a fully loaded gun; five left. Bryn grimaces turning to bring the gun around, _better make them count_. He finishes his turn, half expecting to get shot down before he can bring the gun to bear and offer her any help whatsoever; but he's not the focus of the fight—Next to Sariel's extraordinary penchant for death he's all but forgotten.

He picks off four more soldiers with quick hyper-loud explosive shots before the gun clicks signaling it's empty. All the while she kicks and leaps and spins and bites…and _Jesus_ that's not something a guy wants to watch as the soldier crumples to the ground in obvious agony he doesn't suffer though for long when she ducks over him to finish the job.

The last two pause staring at her, guns hanging limp; forgotten at their sides like the nightsticks equally frozen with shock and horror in their hands. They haven't shot her only because they need her alive, Bryn remembers doubting for all her quick grace she could dodge a few bullets. She's partially alive still because good soldiers follow orders, they don't think. Something he was never very good at. Bryn scowls, the idiots should run. But they don't, and then when her attention shifts to them it's too late.

She's holding a knife lifted off the former solider in her hand, turning the handle over inspecting the blade as it catches the surrounding lights. The soldier she took it from never even getting a chance to remove it from his belt before he was dead. She looks up at them suddenly and they visibly flinch.

She grins at them, "Shiny." She muses softly.

His gut tightens. It was no figment of his imagination. She can _irrefutably_ _talk _Bryn notes. Clearly understand the use for the sharp object cradled almost reverently in her hand; and that prospect seems to freak the soldiers out more than the sight of the rest of their command lying shattered and hemorrhaging on the ground around them.

One of them takes a step backwards reaching around for his gun at his side, but the other is already bent double in the blink of an eye, his frame curled around her arm as she swoops in close to him. His spine bowed out trying hopelessly to escape the blow he saw coming a split second too late, his shaking hands clutching her arm, nightstick dropped with a heavy clatter to the pavement below. The audible grunt of surprised air rushing from his lungs oddly strangled as it leaves his throat.

She wrenches her body up in the next heartbeat, straightening enough to lift him off his feet with her arms despite his larger bulk opening him up before shoving him back down. Her hands and wrists slick with the same bright red blood now coating the knife just ripped from his ruined gut. He flops against the pavement clutching the two sides of his opened belly gasping and moaning in agony while his intestines and blood press up from the opening between his fingers.

The last soldier is clearly shaking when she turns back to him. "And so sharp." She hisses with delight. Then she bares her teeth completely without humor and lunges forward as he starts to raise his arm.

The soldier's gun goes off, but it's not aimed right, panicked rapid fire bursts explode against a brick wall across the street shattering a window and setting a dog already furiously barking somewhere down a richer neighborhood street off its rocker the rest of the way with a string of hysterical howls.

Bryn has to turn his head away, breathe slowly in through his nose and out through his mouth trying to calm his rolling pitching stomach. He shouldn't be standing here, part of his mind screams. He should be running like Hell. The real screaming stops but he doesn't turn his head, waiting for her to advance on him. Rip him to shreds like her last victim now lying very still and obviously dead.

He counts his heartbeats so frantic they make it difficult to draw in his next breath—though that could also be the smell. _Blood_. The air is inundated with it. When he opens his eyes it's all over the ground, so much in fact it almost doesn't look real. The closest body to his boots actually a soldier that he took down. One neat finger-sized hole right through the man's forehead like a tiny red puckered mouth. His pale blue eyes staring endlessly up at the night sky; he realizes some part of him is noticing the young man's face for the first time, waiting for the man to blink, break his awful un-ending stare. Part of him is waiting for him to get up and move again, but he won't; not with that injury.

She moves closer and he's still not dead yet he notes a little surprised. Dr. Patrice's words circle endlessly in his head. And despite his earlier convictions, watching her rip Geeks to shreds is a completely different experience to watching her dismember and chew through the living. The sharp burn of acid works its way up the back of his throat flooding his mouth with a god awful taste. He has to drop his chin to his chest, breathe slowly again before lifting his head to find her standing not five feet from him.

She's watching him intently, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet, perfectly balanced even in those ridiculous shoes. His stomach turns, she looks just like Charlie—could _be_ Charlie right now except for the face, and it's not just the blood. Her eyes are different he notices—harder, darker; definitely more narrowed as she watches him fingers twitching slightly at her sides. His gaze follows them wondering if it's because she's thinking about burying them in his intestines next.

Somewhere a few blocks down a siren sounds and her head whips to the side taking in this new sound. Then she's grabbing him, but not in the way he expects. She's clasping his hand in hers as she yanks him forward twisting on one heel into a half spin away from the noise coming towards them. Her finger's sickeningly warm and wet; slipping against his skin. She glances over her shoulder when his steps falter a moment too long lagging behind her.

"I want you to live Bryn Colt," she tugs his hand again more fervidly this time. "We have to run."

He was right. His chest relaxes marginally with the realization.

He doesn't nod, and she doesn't wait for him to. They race up the street, back the way they came before she darts down a side road dragging him with her, twisting them up a second alleyway before skidding to a stop pressing her back flat to the corner edge of a brick building urging him to do the same. When he tries to move off the wall past her to lead the way she shoves him back against it with a single red slicked hand to his bare chest glaring up at him over a heavily blood stained mouth.

The siren passes and she grips his hand again tight grip slipping against his skin while they race up another street before cutting over two more roads diving behind another building this alleyway so desolate it's impossible to make out anything but her outline moving in the dark. There's a rusted out ladder here, half lowered off an old antique looking fire escape. She indicates the ladder with a flick of her pointed hand and they climb with a few grunts on his part from the jump and a narrowed slanted look back at him on her part as she moves ahead of him. Her feet and hands confident and perfectly steady on the narrow rungs even in the dark while his keep slipping in the blood she leaves behind.

When they pass a heavy drying line strung between the two buildings Bryn pauses, looping one arm through the rung and leaning away to snatch two of the closest materials hanging on the line, no time to be picky about it. They'll have to take what they can get. When he reaches the top of the roof she's waiting for him, hands leaned against the roof's edge frowning at the items thrown over his shoulder.

"Strip."

One of her eyebrows moves north.

He's found the second item he needs for this to work; a rain barrel set on the roof used to feed water into the houses below. She watches him dunk the first item he stole off the line into the blue barrel. He steps closer to grip her chin in one hand, raising his other to drag the wet towel over the line of her jaw.

She snarls and slaps his hand away. She jerks her head back glaring up at him through narrowed eyes when he reaches for her again. Her hands jerking up to lock around his wrists in a formidable grip, she squeezes tighter scowling at him.

He finds himself staring back unable to look away. "It won't matter how far we run if you're covered in so much blood the second anyone sees us they're going to sound an alarm."

She releases his hands at that, turning to the rain barrel and in two quick steps puts one hand up on the edge of the rim and simply hops in dunking herself completely under for the span of a few seconds before popping back out the top. She blinks the water from her eyes, shaking her head slightly before pressing her hands to the barrels edge once more and climbing back out with considerably more sloshing then when she went in.

"Better?" She glares at him. And it mostly is, the pale blue lace is mostly rinsed, or at least to the point that in this low light it's less noticeably soaked in blood than before. She's also dripping wet, certain parts of his anatomy note to his chagrin. Her hair clinging to the sides of her face pressed tight and slick almost like a curtain of blood in the moonlight framing her bare shoulders and continuing on down her back.

"Almost," He finds himself saying. He can't help himself, something in that hard look she levels at him makes him itch to push her just a little bit more. Maybe he has a death wish after all.

He steps closer to her again watches her eyes flick to follow his movement as he reaches for her with one hand using his just his fingers to lift her chin. He drags the wet towel just under her chin turning her face to catch a patch below her ear while her eyes watch him so obscured in the low light they're almost black save for the bright edge of reflected moonlight in their depths. He can't break away from the dark heated look she's giving him, somewhere between argumentative and pissed-off. When his fingers brush the corner of her mouth sliding the wet material over her red stained bottom lip a few times she reacts. Narrowing her eyes to glare at him suddenly while jerking her face out of his hand completely and stepping away. She backs away from him ripping the towel from his other hand with a forceful flick of her wrist and dragging it over her own face roughly before tossing it away into the darkness and stalking to the edge of the rooftop.

"Are you alright?" His voice sounds tight even to him.

"I am undamaged," she snarls.

"You need to put this on." He holds it out to her in answer, her top is mostly clean—but they lost her other shirt somewhere in the club; the bag dropped somewhere long before the fight at Dr. Patrice's and even in the moonlight he can see everything through the wet lace clinging to her curves. A detail he is trying desperately _not_ to notice. She should put it on if not for her modesty for his sanity at least. He already knows intimately that she's wearing nothing underneath that tiny black skirt, the knowledge sliding through his brain at odd intervals making his insides tighten. The shirt he stole will practically be a dress on her lithe frame, he absently notes with a wash of relief, the more of her that's hidden right now the better.

She ignores him still staring at the neighboring rooftop. "You put it on." She throws back.

"Charli—"

"I'm _not_ Charlie." She glares at him over her right shoulder eyes flashing vehemently.

"You're clothes are soaking wet," He starts and then stops when she turns to face him swiftly a hint of rebelliousness in her expression of general irritation he doesn't quite follow until he has to jerk his gaze away swallowing roughly trying to block out the image of her raising her hands to lift the hem of her piss-poor excuse of a shirt. He barely gets his back turned in time cursing under his breath up at the stars.

Behind him he swears for a moment she chuckles at his discomfort but it's so quiet he can't be certain. There's the sound of water hitting the rooftop twisted from her hair maybe or her shirt behind his back, her shoes scraping on the rooftop quietly as she moves around. The sound of water hitting the roof once again fraying already overtaxed nerves—there's more water this time, a larger item; her skirt perhaps now being rung out, his exceedingly unhelpful brain suggests to him complete with images of what that might look like. He has to close his eyes and swallow around his suddenly dry throat; try not to picture her standing not three feet from him completely naked in the moonlight except for her shoes. She's trying to kill him, he knows it, or his brain is; he's certain of it.

"uh," His voice warbles and he stops to swallow, trying to talk just loud enough to drown out the noises of wet cloth being rung out and returned to her body behind him—but not loud enough to draw attention to their position on the roof should anyone happen by on the street or be standing near an open window below them. "We need to move that way, back to the truck…" They need to get out of the City.

"No," she tells him firmly. "We will go that way, and stay off the streets."

He shifts his feet to glare at her jerking his head back around at her raised brow over a lot of still bare skin. _Cripes._ "What the hell is that way tha—"

"You let me worry about that." She talks over him.

He snorts, opens his mouth to argue.

"I am dressed." She informs him and when he turns she is; back in the see-through ice-blue lace, the figure-hugging material slightly tie-dyed with the blood rinse it's received. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest but not really high enough to block anything he notes. She fixes him with a tight glare mouth pressed into a firm line twisted on one edge. "I am keeping you alive Bryn Colt, stop being difficult."

He nearly chokes.

"Put that on and let's go." She turns takes six sweeping steps and launches herself off the roof while he stares after her in disbelief. She lands rolling across the adjacent asphalt rooftop to his right side with scarcely a sound, straightening back up to look at him over the buildings edge. Her body barely more than a vague outline, one more rough shadow in the darkness.

"Funny, I thought you wanted me to live." He grumbles. Even from this distance it appears her eyes narrow back at him. He slips the dark stolen shirt over his head his also lost in their previous flight—it's more his size anyway. He backs up a few more steps then she gave herself. He curses under his breath wondering for a fleeting moment if he's not as Bat-Shit crazy as she is, then he sprints, leaps and clears the five foot gap between the buildings in a heart pounding second. "You're insane you know that?" He snarls getting up to brush imbedded rooftop gravel from his skin.

Her only reply is to grin at him before turning and bolting across the roof leaping to the next building again. He swears under his breath and follows her, the distance far less than three feet this time, and some of them even closer as they continue to move. When they reach a gap too large to leap she turns following the rooftops outer edge, circling to another fire escape and leading him down to another dark alleyway.

She jerks him to a halt just inside the mouth of the alleyway again. Shoving his chest with both her hands to press them both into the heavy pitch black shadow against the wall as a patrol unit hurries past on foot.

In the near distance, just over the pounding of his own heartbeat he can hear the pulse of the clubs maybe two streets down. She grabs his hand and drags him out of the alley again, across the street and down another one, this one's edge clogged with parked cars.

She doesn't stop to take one like he half-expects wondering fleetingly if she knows how to hotwire one in the first place. He nearly slams into her when she stops on a street corner between two heavily occupied sections of club lined street. The music pounds in his head again, hums along his skin while he watches her twist and bend her way effortlessly through the crowd avoiding everyone simultaneously in a way Charlie never could, hell even he gets elbowed occasionally by someone.

She drops his hand suddenly head turning as she's apparently tracking something moving past the crowd. He has just enough time to inhale a panicked breath to yell a warning before she's leaping into the street right in front of an on-coming car.

The sound he makes is swallowed up by the high pitched protest of squealing tires on broken pavement. The front bumper not twelve inches from her legs when the screeching stops. She's staring at the darkened windscreen, expression perfectly calm, expectant; waiting.

The window rolls down and a spiky blonde head pokes out. "I didn't even see you there, I thought I was tripping!"

Bryn stalks into the street, all around them people are staring. He grabs her elbow trying to haul her off the road but she remains fixed to her position staring at the driver still hanging his head out the window looking a bit poleaxed.

"You almost hit me, I think you owe me a ride." She tells him sweetly.

_Yeah right._ Bryn shakes his head, _like that's going to work_. He's trying unsuccessfully to remove her from the road once again; certain they will not be getting a ride from the guy barely past twenty giving her the hairy eyeball from the driver side. Then he shrugs one arm out the window waving her over.

"Oh naturally, least we can do climb right in!" Spiky hair says grinning at both of them. "Don't know where my head's been," He informs the night sky, his head twisted almost unnaturally on his neck as he follows her movement to the back door of the Mercedes, his eyes endeavoring to roll around in his head, clearly un-focusing again. Bryn scowls for a moment wondering just how many drugs the driver is on. "Too much to drink man," the spiky blonde twists his head back to inform Bryn solemnly like it's a problem someone else started and not something he's done to himself. There's a high pitched giggle form somewhere in the vicinity of the passenger seat telling Bryn he's not alone in there.

She walks towards the rear door of the car glancing back over her shoulder at him still frozen and completely dumbfounded in the street. "Bryn get in." She tells him.

More than a few people are still staring at him standing in the street, most of them drunk; but a few of them not. Behind the silver car that stopped for them, another impatient—and most definitely intoxicated youth lays on the horn of his own vehicle drawing more eyes then they can afford tonight.

He gets in. They start off, the car jerking into gear and almost peeling out even before his door is shut again.

"Sorry 'bout that, it happens you know?" Their chatty driver continues as he floors it through side streets not meant for such ventures. "Course if it happened again my Dad said he'd take the car back and how would I get around then? Walk?" Wide eyes fill the rearview mirror staring back at them. "Can you imagine? Who walks anywhere these days?" He adds aghast.

_Generally people who keep running over pedestrians,_ Bryn surmises before chancing a fleeting look to the girl baffling his every thought now sharing the backseat. She says nothing beside him, her head turned to watch the flashing lights and various buildings they're driving past again. The wild mix of City lights casting flame bright halos and washes of unnatural color over her pale skin and wildly twisted wet hair. The shifting hues through the car window highlighting her engrossed expression watching the world slide by them once again. He's reminded of Charlie the night he picked her up; staring wide eyed in wonder out the window at every passing tree and farm house like each one were the eighth world wonder. He supposed for a girl who'd never been outside; they kinda were, just like the dizzying lights of the City mesmerize the _other_ her now.

Outside their car a patrol goes by not even giving them a glance, not in this vehicle; he's starting to wonder if that was pure coincidence.

They swerve around two parked cars almost taking out a third before bumping two wheels up on a curb and then making it off the side street onto a more open road. Luckily without hitting anyone.

"Awesome threads," the driver tells them, his eyes obviously drawn to her top in the mirror. Bryn scowls for several reasons when the other man cranes around in his seat ignoring the road and drifting across two lanes to ogle her scrap of a lace shirt.

Beside him she flashes her teeth, not quite a grin. "Thank you, I made it myself," she tells him and the driver turns back to the road correcting them back across the same two lanes with a quick, "Oops," hooting like that's the best joke he's ever heard. Bryn frowns at her shaking his head. He can only hope she doesn't offer to explain to their driver and his girlfriend who's now taking her own turn staring over the front seat at them exactly _how_ her shirt got that particular look. Then again these two are so outright smashed they might not give that a second thought.

She must feel him watching her in the pressing silence that follows, turning her head from the window to stare back at him. Her expression oddly blank, damn near impossible to read in a way that reminds him of Charlie's carefully neutral face. There's a small dark fleck of something he'd rather not name still coloring the corner of her mouth. His fingers twitch gripping the cool leather seat's edge, indenting the butter soft material under his legs.

She's still staring at him silently. Her weight shifting with the sound of leather over bare skin so that she's almost facing him completely in the backseat, her back to the doorframe; no longer paying any attention to the City outside racing by in a speeding haze. His breath catches somewhere in his chest almost painfully, his suddenly unsteady inhale hanging up on the sharp pressure in his chest. The stumbling nervous beat of his heart drawing his attention, making his palms sweat under her intense gaze.

His hands come up in reflex when she moves towards him across the seat. He's impulsively reaching for her hips steading her as she swings her leg over him while he hisses out a ragged breath watching her eyes darken with a desire that makes his pulse hum. His stomach is falling with a heady rush of want and need he forced himself to all but ignore earlier in the night. They were supposed to be pretending, he reminds himself, tongue flicking out to lick suddenly dry lips; and that had worked out so well he reminds himself, it all came crashing down on his head with one mind-staggering discovery that left him touching her without thinking it through and her lithe form pressed tight against his; completely clueless about what she was doing to him. And dear god she's doing it again. Only in his present company he's certain she _knows_ where they're headed. His head falls back to rest against the seatback watching her shifting over him, straddling his lap in a single self-assured movement blocking the driver and the rest of the car from his view.

Her right hand is pressed to his chest, fingers tightening to a fist over the material of his stolen shirt. His fingers tighten reflexively against her hips, fingertips burning where he's touching bare skin between the waistband of her skirt and that ridiculous excuse of a shirt barely covering anything.

He swallows, should say something; should put her down again, force her back into the seat next to him.

Instead he's kissing her, or rather; she's kissing him. And dear god that's alright by him, doubly so a moment later when she presses flush against him. Her skirt has slid up her thighs again, his fingers tracing the soft skin to the hem before skipping up and over the thin edge of black cloth to grip her ass through still damp material grinding her down into him. She moans into his mouth, inhales pulling her next breath right from his lungs while he drags her close enough to feel her next moan shudder right through him.

"Oh, wow…looks like we didn't leave the party behind after all!" The young man's excited voice from the front seat reminds him suddenly that they have an audience. "Maybe we should pull the car over, join in…"

She wrenches her head back just far enough to snarl against his lips, "Just _drive_," to their enthusiastic chauffer. Her hands are sliding over his chest again…just the hint of rough nails making Bryn hiss.

"Hey man, no problem." Spiky hair turns his head to the blonde girl staring wide eyed at them from the front passenger seat again attention drawn by their new entanglement. "I think they're taking a _solo_ trip," he laughs to his blonde companion. The sound airy and entirely too giddy to be completely on the level. It immediately grates along Bryn's nerves, discordantly snaking down his backbone and raising the hairs along his skin.

But then she grinds against him again a second later and his eyes almost roll into the back of his head and fuck that annoying sound, or their audience or the slightly weaving car likely to kill them all. His fingers curl into tight fists in her hair, the strands damp against his skin with what he hopes is water but might be blood. He drags her mouth back against his, his stomach skipping and falling at the same time his heart is pounding in his ears…pulse throbbing in his aching cock, every sensation growing more intense with her writhing against him sliding over his lap with little shifts of her hips in damn near perfect counterpart to the mind-altering rush fogging up his senses driving him slowly mad like the feel of her hands running under his shirt.

She drags her teeth over his lower lip hard enough to sting and sucks his tongue into her mouth and he groans grasping the back of her head in one hand, dragging her lips against his mouth while she rubs against him driving him damn near out of his mind. She taste like Charlie is supposed to taste, with just the subtle edge of copper from the fight and Fuck, he can't think about that right now…shouldn't even be doing this.

But then she rolls her hips perfectly over him halting all thought, grinding damp wet sex against the already straining crotch of his pants while he hisses in a tortured twisting of pleasure and pain. His hands grip her hips and his body tightens further underneath her. His pelvis rolls up off the smooth leather seat under him on sheer instinct to press against her heat just right. She mewls over him, face pressed to his neck, hot breath bellowing across his skin with each ragged exhale and then her spine goes ridged and her hips buck into his causing him to groan and tighten his hold on her roughly dragging her down; grinding her against him as her whole body vibrates with waves of tension and then she shudders violently, groans his name against his skin and goes completely limp. Her head lolling against his shoulder face instantly peacefully and relaxed.

He tilts her head up, sliding his fingertips along her jawline checking her pulse…still beating…

"Shit man, I feel ya and it was just getting good!" Spiky hair sympathizes in the driver seat catching his eyes in the rear view mirror for a brief moment. "Aint that the problem with drugs you know…sometimes the high gets you…"

The blonde passenger raises a green bottle to her lips taking a swig before passing the obviously alcoholic liquid to the driver. He'd protest if he wasn't convinced the two had partaken of a lot worse earlier in the night.

"My vehicle is just up here," He lies, eager to get them out of this car before they're all killed.

"No dice man, your girl needs to sleep it off, and what kind of hostess would we be if we left you hanging?" Spiky blonde informs him, an odd concept of civility. The high eventuality of killing his passengers with his hospitality in his current state nary a thought in his head. He waves a hand above the seat, voice jovial. "You can even join in if you want!" He offers and the blonde in the passenger seat shoots him a grin over her shoulder.

He hesitates considering their options. Charlie or Sariel—whoever he ends up with when she wakes up is currently, and who knows for how long, very much out of it; a fact that makes running impossible. The truck is nowhere near their current location if he's got the roads right, and getting out of the City tonight might be impossible anyway. They've already passed several patrols, invisible in their fancy street car. While the driver might get them killed between his intoxication and Geek's only knew what else in his bloodstream, he was the perfect cover. Sariel, he realizes, chose their vehicle well. Nobody questioned the rich, not in this area of the City.

"We would appreciate a place to stay," He tells them.

Spiky hair grins again. "Excellent, like they say; Mary's casa is Sue's casa…"

Bryn frowns, he's certain that is _not_ the expression. His lips turn down. It's only cute when Charlie does that. This rich prick having no reason to get that wrong; other than being an _idiot._

That airy laugh again erupts from the front seat once more for no reason tempting Bryn to smash and rip things the way Sariel does. He tightens his hands over her back instead as they slide around a corner nearly throwing them both into the vehicle's door. Bryn shifts her warm tiny frame closer to his chest so he can feel her breath against the side of his face with each puffed exhale. "I will have to politely decline your other offer," he tells the blonde still staring at him over the seat expectantly. She shrugs and leans into the spiky haired driver.

That laugh fills the air again and the Blonde wiggles around in a way Bryn supposed she imagines to be alluring but mostly just reminds him she's extraordinarily smashed and informs him over the seat back a little slurred, "Your loss!"

The driver shrugs tossing an arm around the blonde, ever the peace-keeper. "No problem," he grins over the seatback ignoring the road long enough to make them swerve dangerously again. He jerks his head back at the Blonde's excited squeal and he laughs. "I got the feeling back there you were a one woman only kinda man…" he adds.

Bryn grimaces, and not because of the swerve this time. He is no longer certain of the same. He finds his arms tightening around her limp form still draped across his lap. Can't stop himself from dipping his head to her shoulder against a heavy fall of wet auburn hair breathing her in. Her clothes are pretty much ruined, her shirt smeared with blood that will not be as easy to disguise in the light of day, but she's alive. And thanks to her efforts, so is he.

"We will need a change of clothes," He tells their host hoping to play on his current sloshed hospitality and distract his own circling thoughts.

"That my friend," the driver informs him grinning like a fool again, " is _cake_."


End file.
